


Beneath the Skin

by Brennah_K



Category: BlackJack - Fandom, Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Maybe a bit of Hermione Bash- is it really bashing if they show the same behavior in canon?, Ron Bashing, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-11-29
Updated: 2017-04-20
Packaged: 2018-01-02 22:34:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 18
Words: 30,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1062447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brennah_K/pseuds/Brennah_K
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam Winchester had been on tenterhooks for months, trying to figure out how to tell Jess, the woman he loved, about his dad, brother, and the family business. He loved her, wanted to marry her, and had even bought the ring; the only things holding him back were his fear that she couldn't understand and his certainty that she was keeping secrets of her own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Kissed

**Author's Note:**

> It goes without saying that the AU warning is to prepare you all for where the stories diverge from canon to integrate with each other.  
> Case in point: Bill was infected by Greyback, and Teddy might have inherited his father's affliction, as well; but quite frankly, I can see Umbridge picking him up simply because he was the child of a werewolf (a half-breed) in that sense and using it as ground to dispose of him. I am well aware that (as a kindly informative pm explained) that in canon Teddy was not infected.

Trying to put his earlier meeting with Dean out of his mind, Sam tucked the grocery bags he'd been carrying in his right hand under his other arm and clutched them tightly to his side as he fumbled for his keys. 

He'd been right to tell Dean that he wouldn't go in search for their father. Their father had been out of touch for longer than that, in their teens, more than once, and Dean had never seemed to panic or to try locate him. 

_~That's because Dad left Dean in charge and was always supposed to stay with you and keep you out of trouble. ~_ His subconscious hissed at him traitorously. He wasn't naive: of course, their father could have finally run i/nto a creature that he couldn't conquer, but the likelihood that they would be able to find him in time to rescue him and any other of the creature's victims was so slim as to be almost entirely impossible. On top of that, no matter what Dean said, Sam knew without question that if they did happen to somehow find the creature's lair and came across their father's remains... it wouldn't matter how dangerous the creature was, or that it had been been able to kill a man with more fighting and hunting experience than Dean and Sam combined... Dean wouldn't rest until he'd tracked the creature back to his lair, and try to destroy it no matter how reckless and unprepared he was to face it. 

He'd made the right decision. Sam told himself as he set his grocery bags on the counter. Dean wouldn't just go after their father alone, or he wouldn't have tried to get Sam to go with him in the first place. Bobby wasn't that much further away, and would have the authority with Dean to keep him from doing anything too reckless. 

Trying to push thoughts of his earlier encounter with Dean aside, Sam poured the bag filled with frozen vegetables out onto the counter and flipped the freezer door open to put them in when he finally noticed the unfamiliar voice carrying into the kitchen. 

"Teddy and Bill ... kissed." A man's voice, with a slightly British accent choked out. 

Dropping the package of frozen corn kernels that he'd been about to put away, Sam listened a moment for Jess's voice. Moving toward the living room, Sam stopped when he heard the clear distress in her response: "Oh, Harry, I'm so sorry. Oh, Merlin, how can this go on?" 

Sam paused, cocking his head at her odd phrase. Every once in a while, Jess made these odd little comments that rolled off her lips so naturally that Sam was certain she might have been saying them her entire life if she hadn't usually gotten so self-conscious after saying them and try to play it off. He never pushed her on the subject, but he did wonder. Whatever she meant by the comment, though, it was clear their discussion was private, so he moved back to the counter and - trying to make as little noise as possible - returned to unloading the groceries. 

For several moments, the voices carrying from their living room were dropped below his hearing, until Jess broke the silence that seemed to have fallen after her comment, asking "What are you going to do?" . 

"Dunno. The IWC's interdicted the isles, only 'non-combatants and undeclared parties can enter or leave – and only then by swearing an unbreakable that they have not and will not work for either side. Neither description really fits... Anyway, my passport's no good." 

"What? Why?" 

"I... I'm ... Bill and I..." 

Trying to puzzle out the man words, Sam was momentarily distracted from her questions when her next comment almost made his heart stop. 

"Oh, Harry, how could you be so...It's ... It's practically a death sent..." 

"It was an accident!" The stranger, apparently named Harry, answered urgently cutting her off, "Bill was devastated when we discovered that I – I'm infected. I almost thought he was going to kill himself." 

Infected? The implications were all too clear, and Sam immediately felt a rush of sympathy for the man, trying not to think about Dean again. Hunting wasn't the only high risk behavior his brother tended to indulge in. 

"You could stay here!" Jess suggested in a tone so hopeful it caught Sam by surprise. In the two years that they'd been dating, she had never mentioned anyone named Harry, but clearly they were close enough that Jess him to stay with her. 

"My Own..." the other began, in a patient tone, but whatever else the other might might have said was drown out by the rise of Sam's blood pressure and a subsequent ringing in his ears. "My Own," the other - the male other- had called her _His_ "own" like they were lovers... Or had been. 

He and Jess had been together almost every minute of every day since they had moved in together, so Sam knew she hadn't been unfaithful... during that time. But... What about before that? 

"... A life here," the man commented sounding almost wistful. "Someone..." 

"I want to tell him." Jess interrupted the stranger's voice, drawing Sam closer. Certain that she was referring to him, Sam moved toward the door – even though he knew she'd be angry that he'd returned without telling her and was currently eavesdropping on them - drawn to whatever revelation he knew she was about to make. 

"No...It's not a good time." 

"Harry, I love him... and I think... I think he loves me." 

"My Own, it's not about whether you love him or not. Think of your parents. You love your parents, but think of how far you've gone to keep them from knowing. It's simply not safe for him to know..." 

Unable to restrain himself, Sam pushed angrily through the door, shouting, "to know what?" 

"Sam! What are you doing here? You were supposed to be at..." 

Sam interrupted, not wanting to explain about running into his brother or the argument they'd had. "Anywhere but here? So you could meet with ... what your lover?" 

"Sam!" Jess looked at him with hurt tears glazing her eyes. Shock and anger fought for supremacy in her expression, "You're misreading the situation entirely. I was just telling Harry that I wanted to tell..." 

"No, My Own, this is just exactly what I was trying to say, before he interrupted." The stranger, a sallow, dark-haired man in somewhat worn clothes, answered, continuing, "If he's not even enough of a man to give you the benefit of the doubt or to trust you when an old friend from school visits, how can you even think of trusting him with..." 

Stung by the truth of the stranger's words, as much as he was by the hurt in her eyes, Sam snarled, "Don't worry. I won't interrupt much longer." 

Sam wanted to know the truth, but he knew his own temper and recognized that it would turn into an argument if he stayed around, and was definitely not in the mood to argue with her. 

If he did, in the mood he was in, he was sure, almost completely certain that it would end as badly as his fight with his father had, and that Sam wasn't ready to risk. He loved Jess, far too much to risk hurting her like that, and realized if he did, he'd never regain her trust. 

"My brother, Dean, found me on the way to class, and he's asked me to go... hunting with him. I think I will. We might even meet up with our Dad." Boy was he in the mood to kill something right now. 

Hurrying from the room, Sam paused only long enough to hear her soft comment and the other's answer, "He never told me he had a brother." 

"That's exactly what I was saying, My Own. You've only known him, for what, two years? You don't know him well enough to know if you can trust him..." 

"But, I love him." Jess's voice was almost heartbreaking in her answer, and Sam had to clench the closet's door frame to keep from turning and going back to her, until he heard the stranger's overly calm response, "That's what you said about Ron." 

Grabbing a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, he shoved them into his old canvas backpack and rushed out the back, long before Jess got over her shock and slapped her visitor, crying out "How could you?" then ran into their bedroom and slammed the door. 

How Dean knew to be waiting in the drive way, Sam didn't bother to ask. 

His brother had always had a knack to be there when Sam needed him. Just like he had a knack of knowing when to keep his mouth shut. 

When Sam threw his sack in the back seat, slammed the door behind him, and growled, "Drive," Dean did, and silently thanked the fates that he hadn't needed to go in and drag his brother out. In the mood Sammy seemed to be in, things could have gotten ugly. 


	2. From Different Eyes

"Harry! What a wonderful surprise; I can't believe you were able to get here so quickly, even by international port key." Hermione shrieked in surprise as she backed from the door to let him in. 

It was almost painful to see how good Hermione looked from having been away from their lives... away from for just a little over two years: happy, healthy, relaxed- without the drawn expression of constant strain that she'd begun to wear before escaping with her parents, Hermione looked almost better than any time he could remember seeing him since Voldemort's return at the end of fourth year. 

Studying her apartment as she gave him a quick tour, Harry silently debated with himself the wisdom of bringing her the bad news when she seemed happier not knowing what was going on back home. Maybe she was even safe here, safer without having to know the extent of Ron's betrayal. Especially now, that the International Wizarding Convention had placed an interdiction against British Wizarding community. 

He could well understand, now, Albus's urge to protect him from the horrible burden of his destiny, and he silently thanked and apologized to the headmaster's memory for the attempt - despite the multitude of mistakes Albus had made due to his ignorance. 

But, neither he nor Hermione were eleven year old children, any longer, and there was no telling how many hit-wizards Tom had gotten out of Britain before the IWC laid the interdiction, or how many allies he might have. Hermione might be safe for now under the protection of the Fidelus charm, but if one of the hit-wizards got lucky and took him down, she'd be unprotected and might not even know it until it was too late. 

Wrapping his arms around his midriff, Harry waited silently for the realization that he knew was coming. 

"Wait...I only sent Prometheus yesterday morning. There's no way that he could have reached you. Harry..." 

Stepping back from the hand she'd lifted to touch his shoulder, he turned away. 

"I was on an 'errand' for Minerva,." He fell needlessly back into their euphemism for Order business. 

There wasn't an Order, anymore. The Weasleys, or most of them had been given immunity, for Ron's "Patriotism", but everyone else with even the slimmest connection to the order, or an order member had been either gathered up and forced into 're-education centers' where the imperius actually numbered among the more gentle methods of persuasion – or run to ground in the attempt to avoid such a fate. 

Some few, like Hermione and her parents, who were prime targets due to her association to Harry had been smuggled overseas and hidden under Fidelus charms. Moody had died the same night as Hedwig. Professor Snape, Remus, Tonks, and Fred in the first half of the so-called Final Battle, when it had still looked like there was a chance for Victory. 

Kingsley, Minerva, and Arthur had died in the second half, after Voldemort had fallen in his duel with Harry... and risen again, to smugly reveal that after Ron had left them in the forbidden forest, he'd made contact with Pettigrew and on receiving an unbreakable oath from Voldemort to forgive his family "all past acts of defiance against him" - disclosed that Harry and Hermione had been destroying his Horcrux – allowing Voldemort to create and securely hide additional back-up protections. 

Pomona had last been seen being taken to one of the re-education centers. Professor Flitwick, Hagrid, and Fleur had been purged in the Ministry's campaign to eliminate the unnatural influence of dark creatures... as had ... 

" I couldn't get back in time... Umbridge's crew picked up Teddy and Bill..." 

He couldn't say it. He couldn't tell her that Teddy... their godson. The sweet little boy with Remus's sandy brown hair and Tonk's button-ish nose ...the button-ish nose that must have been her real nose ... had been... had been... 

"Kissed." 

Merlin... Merlin... Oh Merlin... Teddy ... sweet, sweet dear Teddy, and Bill ... Merlin. They'd been kissed ... as Dark Creatures. Harry felt as if he was ready to shatter and break apart and jerked at Hermione's touch when she wrapped her arms around him. 

"... so sorry. Oh, Merlin, how can this go on?" 

He couldn't relax in her arms. If he did, he'd break down; Harry was sure of it. So many people had died, and in the end, it had all been for nothing. His parent's, Sirius's, Albus's, Snape's sacrifices. All for nothing. All squandered by ... by someone he'd once called a friend, someone he'd once ... 

"What are you going to do?" Hermione asked, pulling him to a chair and pushing him into it. 

"Dunno." Harry answered, ignoring her frown at his imprecise speech, "I can't go back. The IWC's interdicted the isles, only 'non-combatants and undeclared parties can enter or leave – and only then by swearing an unbreakable that they have not and will not work for either side. Neither description really fits..." 

There was more to it than that, of course, he simply didn't know how to tell her. Finally, he just hedged with, "Anyway, my passport's no good," knowing that her curiosity would move the conversation from there. 

"What? Why?" 

"I... I'm ... Bill and I..." 

Harry saw the minute that the recognition hit her eyes. 

"Oh, Harry, how could you be so..." 

He turned away quickly, unable to face her criticism. She wasn't there, that night. She was already in America, in Palo Alto... installed under a fidelus as one more nondescript muggle student at a distant muggle university – just well known enough that wizarding hunters wouldn't be likely to look there for a rogue witch or wizard. 

She had been starting a new life while he and Bill had been watching their old life crumble to dust. Neither one had planned for it; Bill had still been mourning Fleur, and probably wouldn't have even stayed at Grimmuald that night if he hadn't found Harry rip-roaring drunk and very much in the mood to do something reckless – reckless and most likely fatal. 

In the end, unable to leave someone, who had taken the place of his youngest brother, inebriated and without supervision, Bill had stayed. Bill had stayed and had held him, even when he turned maudlin, and then when Harry turned more than maudlin... Bill had comforted him, not realizing until much later that the proximity to the full moon had made him contagious. 

He didn't blame Bill, though, even though Bill had blamed himself terribly. How could Bill have known? He hadn't even been a werewolf a full year, and a lot had been going on in that time. 

It's ... It's practically a death sent..." 

"It was an accident!" Harry answered cutting her off, when he saw the anger in her eyes. More likely it was at Bill than himself, but he couldn't let her think that way. He couldn't let her blame Bill. It wasn't Bill's fault that he'd been drunk and stupid. 

"Bill was devastated when we discovered that I – I'm infected. I almost thought he was going to kill himself." 

"You could stay here!" Hermione suggested softly, in the same coaxing, hopeful tone she'd used when she was trying to get him to do his homework. 

"Mione..." he began, patiently, knowing that they hadn't gotten to the hardest part of the conversation yet. He still had to tell her about the hit-wizards, and how close they had come to getting him in New York, but first he had to make sure that she wasn't going to be following him when he left. 

"No. It's too dangerous, even without that concern. Mione, some of us are counting on you to build ... a life ... here," Harry answered trying to sound as wistful as he sometimes felt, instead of envious. "It gives us hope to see it, to know that someone can come out of the other side of this whole awful business and be happy... Someone..." 

"I want to tell him." Hermione interrupted him, unexpectedly, placing her hands on her hips, ready for a fight. She couldn't realize what bad timing her decision was, but his frustration must have shown in his face because she quickly crossed her arms obstinately. 

"Harry, I love him... and I think... I think he loves me." The uncertainty in her voice was almost heartbreaking. Damn Ron! 

"Mione," he groaned, "It's not about whether you love him or not." 

Damn it. Why did she have to decide this now? He had to try to be patient, though. It would only make things harder if she felt like she was being given an ultimatum or being pushed into a corner. 

"Think of your parents." Harry coaxed, "You love your parents, but think of how far you've gone to keep them from knowing." They had risked so much on the run to Australia to retrieve her parents and had nearly been found out several times over before they got her safely away. "It's simply not safe for him to know..." 

When the door suddenly slammed open and her boyfriend pushed angrily through the door, shouting, "to know what?", Harry barely avoided pulling his wand. 

This was so not what they needed right now. 

"Sam! What are you doing here? You were supposed to be at..." 

Instead of listening, though, the brunette glared at her angrily, hurt and confusion running across his face as clearly as if it had been a ministry billboard as he asked, "Anywhere but here? So you could meet with ... what your lover?" 

Blast,why was she always drawn to hot-heads? 

"Sam!" Hermione protested, shock and anger fighting for supremacy in her expression, and Harry could have gladly thrashed the man for hurting her, especially now. 

"You're misreading the situation entirely. I was just telling Harry that I wanted to tell..." 

"No, Mione," Harry interrupted her explanation; he had to make her see the reality of the situation. Maybe in the future she'd be able to take a risk like this, but not now. Not when he couldn't stay around to protect her. 

"This is just exactly what I was trying to say, before he interrupted. If he's not even enough of a man to give you the benefit of the doubt or to trust you when an old friend ... from school visits, how can you even think of trusting him with..." 

Looking almost shame-faced, her boyfriend, Sam, snarled, "Don't worry. I won't interrupt much longer. My brother, Dean, found me on the way to class, and he's asked me to go... hunting with him. I think I will. We might even meet up with our Dad." 

When the fellow ran out the door, Hermione's soft comment, "He never told me he had a brother," changed what Harry had been about to say to her. He had almost told her to go after the man, but this ... If she didn't even know about the man's family... 

"That's exactly what I was saying, Mione. You've only known him, for what, two years? You don't know him well enough to know if you can trust him..." 

"But, I love him." Hermione pleaded with him, but she had chosen him as her secret-keeper for a reason. Harry would do anything to protect her, even if it meant causing her some pain now, to prevent a later tragedy. 

Wincing as he said it, Harry answered calmly, "That's what you said about Ron." 

He almost didn't feel the pain of it when she slapped him, the guilt of his words already hurting like a thousand stone weight on his chest. 

"How could you?" 

By the time, her question finally sunk in, Harry's answer was little more than the a justification to himself, "because I had to." As weak as it was, it had been the only comfort that Harry had ever had. 

He had done what he had to and always would - to protect the people he cared about.


	3. Shrieking

After casting a silencing charm, Jessica Antigone Moore allowed herself to fall against her bedroom door and gasp for breath.

Over the past two years, she had made steadfast and painful attempts to forget that she had ever been known as Hermione Jean Granger and to eradicate any traits or habits that anyone might attribute to her former self, with only a very, very few exceptions.

One of those exceptions was that both Jessica Moore and Hermiome Granger utterly and absolutely refused to allow anyone see her cry. Not Sam and not even Harry, or rather, especially not Harry- he'd already had enough to be going on with, and Hermione had no intention to add to his burdens - no matter how terrified, grief-stricken, or desperate she felt.

Curling her fingers into her palm, she pressed her fist tightly against her lips as if it could hold back the sobs threatening to escape her normally flawless control.

There had been too many blows, at once, and her emotions were vacillating between stung fury directed at both Sam and Harry; heartbreak for the loss of Teddy and Bill; shock and worry at the foolish needless risk Harry had taken; impotent guilt in the knowledge that she had allowed herself to be taken from Harry's side before the task was done; and a wrongness worse than guilt at the knowledge that while her friends were suffering - she'd found love and happiness in her exile. Her shoulders shook with the ferocity of her emotions until she was certain that the door would have rattled if it weren't for her silencing charms, but when she dropped her fist, realizing the futility of trying to keep her feelings bottled up - instead of the tight wracking sobs that she'd expected, a screech of near- primal fury laced with no small amount of accidental magic- shook the room.

After several seconds, when she'd blown off some of the frustration and hurt, the shriek transmuted into a gutteral growl:

"Men are so idiotic: always claiming that women are the emotional, illogical, and irrational one's when they let their so-called 'gut reactions' launch them to the first rash conclusion they could jump to- regardless how illogical or unsupportable." Hermione ranted, pacing the length if the room almost frantically.

"Gut reactions," she sneered, "if that's not a euphemism for emotions- I don't know what is. Stupid, irrational, illogical, stupid. Stupid. Stupid! Gut Reactions."

Shrieking again, she grabbed up the stupid little vase that Sam had bought her in that stupid little street fair that had almost – just barely- made her remember Diagon alley with all of it's oddly dressed vendors. Tears streamed down her face as she cried out and threw.

How could Sam be so stupid, stupid and thoughtless, and just... Just plain dumb. Dumb, Dumb, Dumb. How could Sam be so dumb?

That was the most infuriating part, though. Sam wasn't dumb: Sam was bright. Terribly bright. Probably the brightest male- outside of her late potions professor, who was both terrible and bright in a harsh and uncompromising way- that Hermione had met.

Sam might even be brilliant... When he wasn't being so stupid and harsh and illogical and accusatory...

And he had never been harsh or intentionally dense much less mean ... with her before, had never been un-trusting with her or of her before, had never accused her of anything, much less anything so ... So disgusting. She'd never do anything like that, and he should have known that. When was she supposed to have been with someone else anyway?

Almost from their first class together - when she was still decidedly not trying to encourage friendship, when she still believed that she would be hiding out for a few months until Harry and the Order located and destroyed the remaining horcrux - it seemed like they were being thrown together in the same classes, study sessions, and revision sections... Even the in the back stacks, where only a few of the most dedicated students referred back to archival texts that had little to no use in terms of precedents - but often offered critical highlights underlying the promulgated. Time after time, they ran into each other until trying to avoid him became more awkward and time-consuming than simply talking.

Talking in the stacks turned into sharing observations and notes turned into sharing coffees into sharing meals, sharing rooms, and finally sharing beds. Even then, she'd not jumped into bed with him - the way she had with ... the other... She quickly pushed aside thoughts of the man that she'd thought she'd loved, before Sam.

It was harder to do when Harry had brought such horrible news, particularly as it pertained to another Weasley, but she had to. She wouldn't be able to think straight if she continued to think about Him, and she needed to think straight. She had to. She didn't know why the two closest people in her life were being unthinking and cruel; there had to be something going on behind it.

Even when Harry had been at his worst, during their fifth year, blowing off at anyone and everyone, he had never been thoughtlessly cruel. Although he'd loved and respected Sirius, he hadn't really known him, not really. Not except for a few stolen moments, over two very short years. Teddy was different. Not even when Sirius had died, had he been like this, but Teddy... Teddy's death might have been something all together different.

Although Harry had never said it, she knew that Harry felt his relationship with Teddy was the closest that he might ever come to having children. Just after George and Bill had smuggled them out of Scotland and into France with Madam Maxime's assistance, Harry had confided that he thought he would likely have to die, again, "to finish the job" with Voldemort, and didn't think that he'd be coming back the next time. 

Due to that, he asked her to make sure that Teddy knew, after Harry had gone, that even though he felt guilty about taking their places "And being responsible for their deaths", Harry had cherished the time he'd spent with his godson. Harry had raised Teddy, in Remus's and Tonk's place, hoping to give his godson a better childhood than he'd ever had. The childhood that he'd been meant to have... and he'd put his hole heart into it. As a result, Teddy was the only one spared his depressions. The only one he ever smiled for, and the only one that Hermione had believed he would choose to live for.

After Voldemort called their former-friend forward, the Harry she had met and known their first year had died the in the span of seconds that it had taken for _Him_ to roll up his sleeve. The sight of the slithering black skull and snake writhing on the pale, freckled forearm of the friend who had shared their adventures from first year on, who had been almost inseparable, except for that bad spell during the tri-wizard tournament, who Hermione had thought she loved... that sight had killed something vital inside of Harry, something that spurred his spirit and fervor. Since then Harry had still been willing to lay down his life to protect anyone and everyone, but after that one instant the light and spark that had previously filled his eyes with light and joy and indignation and anger had gone out of his eyes – in a way that she doubted could ever have been re-kindled. Perhaps not even for Teddy. She had a suspicion that she knew why, but had never been able to talk to him about it. By some unspoken agreement, they had never spoken of _Him_ of even breathed his name again.

That was part of the reason that his comment had hurt so much. They never spoke about _Him_ , and here Harry turned around and used his name like a battering ram to get his way. Had losing Teddy changed him so much? She hadn't believed that anything could re-kindle the spark in his eyes, but there had been a warmth there when he looked at Teddy that almost no one else had ever been permitted to see.

Thinking about the child, She was startled to find that could hardly remember Teddy; he had only been a toddler the last time that she'd seen him. Barely able to speak. Held on Harry's hip as they leaned out the bus to kiss her good bye. Bill and George had laid the foundations for the wards by runic crystals that they had hand carved without the use of magic, back in England, so there would be no trace of their magical signatures in California that could lead anyone there. Harry had never been allowed to set foot on the ground for fear that his magic had a geis on it. Her wand had been snapped and banished into the Atlantic when they stopped in Georgia to have an old indian shaman created a new wand for her out of American materials: crystals, furs, and feather's – free of the ministry's tracking charms. Sam thought it was a trinket that she'd bought from a street fair, never guessing that she could actually use it, or that using it in Georgia under the shaman's had enabled her to alter her own magical signature, accent, and appearance.

Gone was the unforgivably dull, bushy hair; middle-to-uppercrust British Accent; pale skin; and her somewhat british figure. George had wolf-whistled when she'd first stepped out of the shaman's tent, but Harry had only shaken his head, and commented that at least she'd be harder to recognize. At the time, she hadn't realized his reaction was more a matter of his orientation than a rejection of her; and it had hurt – quite a lot. They hadn't spoken for a day or two after that, until Bill flicked him pretty hard in the head and told him to apologize. Until that point, he hadn't even realized how she might have taken it, and he'd apologized profusely before coming out to her.

It was only after that – that she had begun to recall hints and expressions and reactions that finally begun to fall into place in a way that they never had before, and Hermione finally realized that Harry had loved _Him_ , too; although he'd never said, apparently willing to sacrifice his own happiness for theirs. Harry understood how much the mere memory of _Him_ hurt, how much comparing Sam to _Him_ hurt, and it made Harry's comment all the more inexplicable.

~No. It doesn't make sense. There has to be more. More behind it, for both of them. I have to think through, and I can't do that while I'm crying and sniveling.~

Following the shaman's guidance, she apologized to the flower she'd flung with the vase, for subjecting it to violence and cast the repair charm. It seemed a bit silly to her, but she had to admit that her wand behaved better when she followed the indigenous customs. Setting it to rights on the stand, Hermione ran her wrists across her eyes, ignoring the smudges of mascara; pulled her Jessica Antigone Moore persona tightly around her; and decided after a glance in the mirror, that she needed a bath to settle her nerves.

Then, using the best of both personas, she was going to figure out what was going on with the two knuckle-headed prats and figure out how to return them to their senses.


	4. Apology

Sighing, Harry glanced sympathetically toward Hermione's closed door. She was still to angry, though, and her surge of emotional magic completely rebuffed his silent apology. He couldn't blame her for the slight, however. Her current emotional state was pretty much entirely his fault.

She hadn't expected to see him until after the war ended; and now, not only had he barged into her life, putting her at risk of discovery, but he'd also brought news that her unofficial godson and one of the men responsible for her escape from Great Britain had been executed... 

And just to top it off, he had possibly destroyed the happiness she had finally allowed herself to discover in her exile.

It would be a wonder if she didn't hate him when she came out, and it would only be worse when she came out and found him gone, but he didn't have a choice.

From long experience, he knew that she would let off a little steam, probably call him and her boyfriend idiots of the lowest order, take a shower or go swimming, take a while to remind herself why she'd ever been their friend in the first place, and then sit down and try to figure out how to make things right between them while convincing them of her position with a well reasoned argument.

Depending on how angry she was, the process could take between four to six hours... time he just didn't have.

Even with the potion he'd taken to suppress his magic, it had been a horrible risk to come any where near her region of the country. If any of the trackers had stumbled onto her location, or were even nearby and had wards up, he could have led them straight to her... And neither Riddle nor Minister Umbridge would have blinked twice at capturing her to use against him. 

But the trackers had gotten to close in New York, and if it hadn't been for the noise coming from a party in the next door neighbors apartment, Harry wouldn't have realized that his wards were down in time to escape their ambush.

He'd been thrown, barely conscious, off of Sirus's motor bike when it exploded, and only the 'cover-all' and sticking charms in his invisibility cloak had kept him from being discovered until he had bled out enough that his emergency port key triggered, carrying him away to Gringott's Nearest Branch. 

It had been a harsh wake up call.

After two years of almost non-stop hunting, Harry hadn't gotten one step closer to locating Voldemort's new horcrux or even the ritual used to make them, so that he could figure out ways to trace them. Voldemort's hunter's, on the other hand, had been having fantastic luck, getting perilously close time and time again, so that Harry was using the magic suppression potion at the rate that worried even his Goblin healers.

Despite that fact, though, they'd found him New York, even with that, and if his cloak had been anything but one of the hollows, deprived of his magic and barely conscious, Harry would have been dead.

He had to face reality: he could barely protect himself, much less Hermione, and if he was killed without transferring the fidelus- they could get to her before the owl announcing his death.

Harry had no doubt that they would have come after her. Revenge wouldn't be enough for Voldemort. Hermione wasn't just Harry's friend and a 'mudblood' in Voldemort's eyes; she knew the secret of the means to his immortality, and of any witch alive, she was the most likely to discover a means to undo them.

No, Hermione wouldn't be safe except under fidelus with a reliable secret-keeper, a secret-keeper, who couldn't be Harry any longer.

Feeling the rapidly diminishing time before he was discovered as tangibly as if it was a weight on his shoulders, Harry scanned room, smiling softly at how familiar it seemed. No matter where Hermione lived, anyone who knew her could predict the layout of her home down to the square meter. As expected, he found her fountain pens and stationary in the lower left-hand drawer of her desk, right beside the rule she'd used since Hogwarts to mark perfect ten centimeter margins. He ran his fingers over it, almost tempted to nick just to have some reminder of her with him. 

Thinking of another such reminder, he ran his finger over his ear lobe but drew little comfort from it. He'd replaced Bill's earring with a small stud, suspecting that they'd used it to find him in New York. Knowing that any small thing of hers they found on him when they finally caught up with him could be used to track her, he traced his fingers over it one last time and pushed the drawer closed.

Unable to cast secrecy and notice me not spells to prevent her boyfriend from reading it, Harry considered what he'd needed and wanted to say for several moments...

" _To My Dearest Sister,_ " he began, with a small smile, remembering the Shaman's ritual that had bound the hope-lost and war-weary refugees as a family of their own, in absence of their birth families. Shaman Jack had been right to suggest the ceremony: for a very brief time it had given them hope and a reason to celebrate in what was only just the beginning of a very dark period. 

Hermione had been so fascinated by the ritual that he and George had been almost certain that Hermione would choose to stay there instead of going on to Palo Alto, but Bill had kept a level head and dissuaded her from indulging in side interests until she had a degree and background that she could build a life on in the Americas without being investigated. Bill had been right, and from what Harry thought he'd seen earlier, it had worked.

Shaking himself back to the present, he returned to his letter, writing, _"I can't tell you how much I've missed having you at my side. You were always the smartest of us, and I know that I wouldn't have made half of the mistakes I've made if you'd been around... But keeping you safe - and happy- has always been more important._

I didn't stop to ask if you're happy. Are you? You looked happy. I hope so. I'd like to think that your boyfriend is good for you, and that I just showed up on a bad day, but you have to be careful, Mione, especially now.

No one knows where you are, and for as long as I can, I'll do what I can to keep you safe, but you need to know there's a good chance that I won't be able to much longer. Tommy has friends who've come to this side of the pond to take care of business for him, and they've nearly caught me half a dozen times.

This last was worst, and I only made it out of New York with the help of some well-paid friends.

Mione, I don't know if you can trust your bloke or not; but, if you can, bring him to Shaman Jack's place on the night we ate the last of the jellies, Bring him, and I'll explain it all.

If not, still come and between the three of us, we'll find some way to make sure you're safe- no matter what.

Mione, I know I've probably never said this, but you've been the best thing in my life. I love you, Sis. I never say it, but I do. 

Your brother,

H~"

Reading back through his note, Harry decide that he'd written about as much as he could without revealing too much; but just as he was about to seal the envelope, a thought occurred to him. Pulling out his wallet, Harry removed the small photo and stared at it for several seconds, before turning it over with shaking fingers, filling in some missing dates, and slipping it into the envelope. Finally steeling himself, he set it on the table and rose to leave.

The bleached parchment envelope seemed so desolate, uncaring, and empty against the black marble table top that it sent a pang of guilt through him. 

She was already going to be hurt that he didn't wait to talk. This just made it look all the worse, as if he didn't even care about her any more.

He couldn't leave it like that. Jotting a quick note on the front helped, but not enough. Without his magic, there was just so little he could do. In fact, he was sort of limited to the sorts of things he'd done for his relatives before the war: cooking and cleaning, and... an idea came to mind when his eyes fell on the kitchen door.

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By the time that a very determined Jessica Antigione Moore, formerly Hermione Jean Granger, dropped her privacy charms and came out of her bedroom, notes in hand, seven hours later - the envelope was propped in front of a plate of homemade oatmeal biscuits. Sadly, though, despite his efforts, she neither noticed nor appreciated his attempt to soften the blow.

She had barely given the kitchen the cursory glance required to determine that he wasn't there, before she stormed back to her room dashing angry tears from her cheeks.


	5. Brotherly Advice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

>   
>  _  
> Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret._
> 
> Ambrose Bierce

"How you doin', Sammy?" Dean asked with concern as his little brother, okay... his gargantuan little bro, rolled his head against the head with a groan.

It was a ridiculous question, he knew, but he had to ask it anyway. That freaking woman in white had skewered Sammy in the chest, and even if it hadn't left bleeding punctures behind, it had have done some sort of damage. Sammy hadn't been quite right since it had happened, even though the pussy had refused to take the stronger pain meds, which Bobby has gotten from the VA for their first aid kits, because he was afraid of it making him loopy during the interview he had the next morning.

To tell the truth though, Sammy hadn't been quite right since he'd come out of his apartment, thrown his bag in back and told him to "just shut up and drive" whenever he seemed to think that Dean was going to ask him about it. Dean wouldn't have admitted that Sammy had been right most of the time about Dean's attempt to get him to spill, at least not out loud. He sooo wasn't into that chick-flick crap about talking out feelings, so let it go, even knowing that it was dangerous to go on a hunt so distracted... distracted and out of shape. Sammy hadn't even been on a hunt in two years, but Dean had let it go, and look at where it had gotten them.

Sammy was hurt, whether he'd admit it or not, and it was Dean's fault for dragging him into it. What the hell had he been thinking anyway? They'd always known that there'd be a hunt that their dad wouldn't be coming back from, and their dad's first and most unbreakable rule - for that event had been to get Sammy the hell out of Dodge and keep an eye on him so that he wouldn't get hurt. They'd both known, despite all his dad's efforts, that Sammy wasn't really cut out to be a hunter.

He had the skills, their Dad had seen to that, but not really the heart for it. Unless the monster they were hunting had gone after someone's mother, Sammy would argue with their father about whether it was right to kill them for following their natures and that if it really was because the "monsters were hunting humans, then why wasn't he hunting serial killers and the like, too," and that it was arrogant to think that humans were top of the food chain.

He should have left Sammy out of it, but truth be told things hadn't been right between him and his father since Sammy left. It was part of the reason he'd started going on hunts on his own- cause he'd been pretty pissed at his father for telling Sammy he couldn't come back and then for being an ass enough to change their cells out so that Sammy couldn't reach them if he tried.

They'd gotten into a pattern after that- staying together until they were almost at each others throats, blowing up at each other over which hunt should come first, then going off on their own. When they came together, they'd go on a ripping drunk, always drinking the last drink as a toast to "college boy's and coeds" (though their Dad would never actually come out and say Sammy's name), and then they'd start the entire cycle over.

Dean hadn't wanted to admit it, and he truly did have a bad feeling about their dad's disappearance; but he wasn't entirely certain that their dad hadn't gotten sick of the crap and just, finally, cut him loose.

"Sh-h-h-I-t!" Sammy cursed in a long drawn-out groan, pounding his head back against the rest.

"Sammy! What's wrong? What is it?"

"I'm a moron."

The answer was so unexpected that Dean had to stare at him for a second or two before answering, "Shit, Sammy, I coulda told ya that."

Sammy turned toward him with a grim smile, not rising to the bait.

"Come on, Sammy, fess up. What did you do? Tell Big Bro, and maybe I can fix it."

"I doubt it."

"Awww, come on. You don't know."

"Dean, seriously, your idea of commitment is buying a second beer for your one-night stands."

"Oohhh, so this is about that chick you're seeing. Janice or Jazz or something?"

"Jess,"

"Huh, you sure?" 

"Dean! Be serious. Of course, I'm sure." 

"Kay, just chill Sammy. I was only trying to lighten the mood." Dean raised his hands in surrender. He'd forgotten how pissy Sammy could get when he was hurt.

"Hands on the wheel, Dean," Sammy burst out sharply, before sighing, "I wanted to marry her, I already have the ring."

"You're shittin me. You're that serious about her? Why the hell did you come on the hunt, then? You know how these jobs go. We mighta found Dad, but there was just as good a chance that we'd end up right where we did, or worse, you're so out of practice that you coulda been gakked out there. What were you thinking?"

The sneer Sammy gave him was pure sixteen-year-old Sammy, full of piss and vinegar and in your face ready to tell you exactly how stupid he thought you were in words he knew you wouldn't understand, just to prove his point; so Dean sent up a word of thanks to whatever gods, demi-gods, and wish-givers were involved when twenty-two year old Sammy stayed in control of the mouth and answered, "Correct me if I'm wrong, here, but you were in possession of all of those facts when you found me on the quad and threatened that I had to sleep sometime and when I did you would break into my apartment, raid the fridge, throw a bag over my head, and drag me out on the hunt, anyway?"

Smirking and willing to take the hit to keep Sammy talking, Dean chuckled, "Sammy, you've been telling me I'm a moron since you learnt the meaning of the word. As far as I know, you've never been proven wrong."

Shaking his head with exasperation, Sammy glared at him, then huffed, "well, it seems to run in the family."

"Come on, Sammy, fess up what did you do?"

"It was just after I saw you." Sammy began tentatively, with that I'm-keeping-my-chin-up-like-it-doesn't-matter-but-if-you-laugh-I'll-sulk-for-a-month expression that Sammy had used since he was six, after their father had balled his brother out for crying when he'd come home two days late from a werewolf hunt, with an eight inch gash from his ribs to his spine.

Dean'd had been too anxious, stitching the gash up with shaking hands and fishing line to interfere, but after finishing up, Dean had helped their father to bed, watched cartoons with Sammy for a bit, made Sammy's favorite for dinner, mac n' cheese, and seriously oversalted their father's serving. Their father hadn't said anything about it until just before he left on another hunt, about three weeks later, when he warned Dean that he'd better cut the crap or he'd find out another way that his dad could use his belt.

"I accused her of having an affair when she couldn't have been," Sammy answered, his voice sheepish and guilty.

"And you're sure you really like this chick? Cause it doesn't sound like you trust her."

"I do, really. I was just... I had just seen you, and I was thinking of all the secrets I've been keeping from her, and was still angry about Dad, and I walked in on her with this guy I'd never seen before..."

"Man, if you walked in on them doing the dirty, there..."

"No, it wasn't like that," Sammy protested before going on to explain.

When he finished, Dean couldn't help himself.

"Sammy, Man, I just have to ask: what do you two get up to that she's talking about two guys kissing, and your first thought is that she's having an affair?

"Oh, shut up! Dean, this is serious. What am I gonna do?"

His eyes were pleading with Dean to make everything right again... something he'd never been good at. Still, he had to try.

"Okay, Sammy-boy, here goes. There's only one thing I know of that you can do. Man up, get on the phone, call her, and tell her you've been an ass. If you're lucky, by the time we get you back, she'll have calmed down enough that your things won't be out on the curb."

"I don't know, Dean. She'd be right to be angry. I seriously screwed up. I don't know how she could forgive me, after what I said."

"Tell her that. It won't get you out of having to make a chick-flick confession, and you'll have to kiss ass for months; but, from what I've seen, chicks eat up apologies like chocolate- an when you actually admit to being wrong, it's whipped cream an' cherries."

"Wow, Cyrano had nothing on you. You're a real cynic; you know that?"

"Maybe, but I'm not the one who's six feet in, deep shit with ..."

"The woman I love." Sam interrupted warningly.

"Yeah, sure, whatever." Dean agreed easily. He had a keen sense of danger and it was flashing red alerts like they were k-mart specials.

Handing his phone over, Dean smirked as Sammy grimaced, but mumbled 'thanks' and dialed. His brother was so whipped. Still, Sammy took his advice, and after a short, very tense discussion, whispered something into the phone and sighed in relief when he was answered almost immediately.

"You are sooo whipped." Dean mocked him when Sammy finally handed him the phone back.

Sammy just ignored the jibe though and sighed, "thanks," before dropping his head back with a sigh.

"She's been crying." He commented softly, turning helpless eyes to his brother.

"I really hurt her."

This was why Sammy didn't belong out on the road. The thought of causing pain just tore his little brother apart, so Dean said the only thing he'd ever been able to say:"I know, Sammy. I know. Why don't you try to get some rest... Things will be better when you wake up."

He didn't believe it and knew Sammy didn't either, but Sammy closed his eyes anyway and after a few restless moments drifted off to sleep.


	6. Cutting Threads

**Summary for the Chapter:**

>   
> _I assess the power of a will by how much resistance, pain, torture it endures and knows how to turn to its advantage._  
>  Friedrich Nietzsche  
> 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a small warning: this chap is intentionally disturbing, and you may want to skip it for themes of violence and torture.

The bath and the phone call from Sam had helped, but Jessica still felt drained and emotionally wrung out. As much as she appreciated his admission that he'd been wrong and knew she was blameless, she still wasn't looking forward to their upcoming conversation.

In the time it had taken her to think things through, Jessica had come to the conclusion that Sam would never have said what he did if he hadn't first sensed that she was holding something important back from him and outright lying to him. He had never pushed when she'd had made little slips of the tongue, and she'd always been grateful for it.

In retrospect, though, she could see how damaging her secrecy had been.

Having no reason to suspect that she was living under an alias and certain knowledge of her academic integrity, Sam had jumped to what Jessica, herself, conceded was the next most logical conclusion about what could have motivated her to lie to him: namely, infidelity. It would have been absurd of him to even consider that her history, as far as he knew it, was a sham designed to obscure and protect even more incredible and likely- to his perspective- impossible secrets; and Jessica was not without a slew of reservations spinning in the back of her thoughts- screaming at her that she should keep her secrets, that he wouldn't believe her, that at best he'd think she belonged at Berkeley with the 'liberals, vegans, and Nuts', as one of their pre-law professors liked to say... At worst, he'd think she was delusional and report her to their RA for counseling and intervention...

"My, my... What thoughts you have spinning around in that fantastical little brain of yours," an oily voice cut Jessica out of her thoughts.

Snapping her chin up, Jessica stared into her mirror at the figure standing behind her: a man, who looked vaguely familiar.

"How did you get in here? Who are you? What do you want?" Hermione rambled, dropping her 'Jess' mannerisms and habits as she extended her hand to summon her crystal wand.

Chuckling softly, he shocked her by plucking her wand out of mid air as it sped past.

"Naughty, Naughty, that's hardly the way to treat an invited guest."

"Invited? Did Sam invite you? Is he back?" She asked suspiciously, still uneasy at his sudden appearance. Even if Sam had just let him in the door, it was entirely inappropriate for him to be in her bedroom.

"No, Sam's not here; although, I do expect him shortly, but he's not the one who invited me Hermione. You are."

Sitting up, bolt-straight, at his use of her given name, Hermione sharpened her gaze as she stared at his mirror image as she tried to remember his face. As she stared into the glass, though, a hazy image replaced him in the mirror, as if filling in a cutout of his form.

Her mouth dropped open as she saw herself, hanging from a wall, writhing in chains as Bellatrix LeStrange cast one torture curse after another inventing tortures from seemingly innocuous charms. 

After using a vegetable-paring spell to strip ribbons of skin from her over each rib, Bella had literally and liberally salted and peppered the exposed layers of muscle before using the same stitching spell that Mrs. Weasley used to finish her jumpers - to pull the little skin available on Hermione's already gaunt frame tightly across the butchered muscles, making every breath a torture of its own as every struggling gasp pulled the skin and stitching. 

The stitching spell had been one of Bellatrix's favorites, and over the previous days, she'd sewn Hermione's fingers and toes together before burning the thread away; she'd packed Hermione's eyelids with salt and nettles before sewing them shut; then had sewn Hermoine's lips together and used a caustic blade to dig the stitches out, without cutting the thread, when she said that she missed Hermione's screams. Although she had never broken under Bellatrix's tortures, Hermione had begun to slip away into the near constant haze of pain until very very late one night, she'd had a visitor at the hallway wall that they never took her down from, hanging completely exposed, as both a warning and invitation to anyone who passed.

"Your screams were so delicious and Bella's work such a masterpiece of pain and ingenuity," the oily voice whispered in her ear, as she watched herself in the mirror. 

"I was incredibly tempted to leave you hanging there, just to watch how far she could take you before you either cracked or died. Bella had so many other plans for you. She enjoyed your reaction to nettles, immensely; it featured in her dreams for weeks inspiring so many wicked, truly wicked ideas (and I do have a enough experience in the area to tell the difference). You were quite the muse, Hermione. She's used hundreds of variations of the tortures she dreamed up for you, but sadly none of her other little muggle toys have ever had your stamina."

Hermione shuddered at his words, trying to pull away from the rough cheek that was almost rubbing hers. She couldn't. She couldn't move. Not a hairsbreadth. Not even to turn away from the horrifying images being played out in the mirror. Although she'd known that she was exposed, at the time, she had been so focused on resisting Bella's tortures and trying to figure out a means to escape, that she had never taken the time to considered what she might have looked like. Seeing it now, was somehow, all the more horrifying as his words brought back her agonizing vulnerability. Finally, though, all of his words sank in, and her voice seemed to work: "You!"

"Yes, that was me. When I let you go, she was debating between having some of her other captives, the boys of course, fourth years, I think, just young enough to be impressionable, just old enough to get the full effect of having their hands on you - rubbing your delicious little body raw with nettle puffs, and probably enjoying even with the nettles they were rubbing into every square centimeter of your body until you bristled like a hedgehog or packing your most tender passages with the nettles and setting them on fire to see whether you would glow like a candle in a jar. It was such a temptation to wait and see the outcome, but your little friend relied on you too much, and he was doing too good of a job at keeping an ... unwanted competitor occupied to pass up the opportunity."

"You ... let me escape to help Harry?" Hermione questioned, overwhelmed and confused. 

He couldn't have been doing this if he wasn't a wizard, but Hermione had never heard of any spell that could be used to manipulate her mirror like that, not even in the gruesome Dark Arts materials she'd researched to help Harry on his search for the... She intentionally pulled her mind away before she could even think the word, in case he was able to do legillimency. The fact that he could soundlessly and wandlessly do such complicated magic terrified her, but if he wanted to help Harry... 

"No, I wouldn't say I wanted to help Harry. He simply served a purpose - helping to keep that grasping little half-blood in his place. There was more to it than that, though. Your spunk, intelligence and magical talent, not to mention, sheer endurance would have made you the perfect mother for a very special child, so I decided to make that little bargain with you, remember?"

In the mirror, the hallway darkened as an almost nondescript man with mousey brown hair that matched his trench coat approached Hermione, rubbing his hand up her side with little gentleness as he made his offer. The shock and disbelief were apparent on her face, even through the agony she was suffering.

After hearing his offer, she had questioned him, too intelligent, even in her desperation to trust anyone who could walk freely through Malfoy Manor. As he answered, an echo of his voice echoed from the mirror, "as long as I'm not interrupted, no one you love will get hurt, you have my word." 

After a moment's thought, Hermione nodded, agreeing in a wavering tone, "Okay, you'll let me go and help me get back to Harry, and in return, one day, you can visit me at my home as long as you don't hurt my parents or family." 

Smirking in the mirror, the man agreed repeating her version of his offer, then pressed himself against her - sealing the bargain with a kiss, even as the force of his weight on her butchered body pushed her screams into his mouth.

"Now, do you remember? I remember you, your lips, and that delicious kiss," He turned her to face him even though her limbs were frozen in place and leaned closely into her, until she could not help but see how his eyes glowed unnaturally yellow as he lowered his lips onto hers.

After a moment, he pulled back and commented in a voice of false disappointment, "You know, somehow, it's just not the same. Hmmm. Wonder what it could be?"

A feeling of icy horror trickled down her spine as he tapped the tip of his finger thoughtfully against her lower her lips. 

"Wait, I have an idea..."

Leaning in again, he pressed his mouth to hers, forcing her lips wider with his tongue before he simultaneously plunged the sharper edge of her crystal wand into the soft flesh of her belly, sliced it sideways, and whispered the fiendfyre incantation into her mouth.

Her agonized scream barely lasted the fiftieth of a second that it took him to freeze time around her, but it was enough to bring a soft, cruel smile to his lips. "Much better. Much, much better. It really is a shame, you know; for a human, you are quite a good kisser."

Shrugging, Azazel stepped back into the shadows and glanced around the room, as he felt Samuel Winchester return. Lifting his hand, he gestured toward the ceiling and watched with amusement as her limbs, finally, worked, against both the bubble of frozen time surrounding her and her will – to crab-crawl backwards up the wall and across the ceiling only stopping when she was parallel to the bed she shared with Samuel. 

"I'm sure that your spawn would have been special even without my help, especially with Sam as his daddy. If only, you and your friend had taken care of Riddle as you were supposed to, I would have done nothing more than visit and give your child a bit of blood to boost his abilities. Oh well, things don't always go as planned, as I'm sure you realize."

Caught and silenced in a timeless scream, Hermione watched as he disillusioned himself and faded into the shadows until only the yellow glow of his eyes were visible.

"As intelligent as you seem, though," he whispered, "you neglected one small detail of the bargain: I never promised that you would be safe from my attentions. Perhaps, it really is better that you won't being going on to law school; you really aren't very good with contracts." 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My apologies to anyone who was rooting for Hermione to somehow turn the tables on Azazel (aka the yellow eyed demon) and survive; Jess's death was too motivating an event in Sam's life. That's not to say that Hermione's won't be seen again, in some form or manner. Mary and John both made re-appearances after dying from the deals they made with Azazel, and they were Muggles. Harry also still has the hollows (including the resurrection stone) so there are means and opportunities for her to return in the future.


	7. His Brother's Keeper

**Summary for the Chapter:**

>   
>  _"I am tired; my heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever."_
> 
> (Chief Joseph, 1877)

Dean had a keen sense of danger, and it was flashing red alerts like they were k-mart specials.

It had been on high alert, in fact, from the moment Sammy had hung up the phone with his girlfriend. 

At first it had been an itch at the back of his neck, just below the collar line - like the feeling he'd get on the road when he didn't have enough to pay for a motel room and could only give his spare clothes a quick rinse out in the men's room sink of the first gas station he came across, and maybe a rinse, if he was lucky, to wash the soap out before someone came knocking on the door to find out what was taking so long.

The closer they got to Sammy's apartment, though, the more irritating the feeling got, and it was coupled with a strong urge to get Sammy the hell-outta-Dodge, an instinct that Dean usually paid close attention to. He would have this time, too, if he felt that Sammy wouldn't put up a scrap, probably knock him out first chance he got, and run straight into whatever trouble was causing Dean's sixth sense to scream at him like a banshee with a load of rock-salt in its gut.

In Dean's experience, Sammy's talent for stubborn, had only ever met its match in his ability to be at the center of trouble, wherever it could be found.

It was almost like Sammy's name was written in the stalls of every joint frequented by the big, the bad, and the 'F-ugly' – with a note "For a fun time, come mess with this kid." From Strega's to Weres to Women in White, they all had his number written in their little black books and just couldn't wait for their turn come calling on him.

That was why Dean kept his mouth shut: no matter what he'd said, Sammy was going to come back to apologize to his girlfriend and try and make things right.

If Dean got in the way, Sammy wouldn't even think twice about ditching him to get to her- no matter what stupid risk it took to do it. So, Dean kept his mouth shut when Sammy closed the door behind him, promised to keep in touch, and waited for him to pull away, which he did.

Dean pulled away from the curb, watching his brother in the rear view mirror, just until Sammy reached the stairs and went inside. When that happened, Dean did a tight u-turn and parked as close to the apartment as he could without being seen from the front windows.

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Trouble incarnate came roaring up the street on a sweet, sweet bike - a 1965 or 67 Triton less than five minutes later.

The thin, dark-haired rider laid the Triton down without care about the sick amount of damage he was doing to his ride as he jumped off the skidding bike and ran toward the apartment steps – the steps that Sammy had just gone up.

Dean jumped out when the man, who was dressed in a set of funkiest riding leathers that Dean had never seen the like of before, cursed after waving a thin stick at Sammy's door, then stepped back and kicked the door in. Sprinting across the yard, he made it up the steps at a speed that would have made even his dad proud and wasn't surprised to find Sammy's inner door kicked open either. 

No, the surprise came a breathless moment later, when following hoarse, anguished shouts that thankfully didn't seem to be coming from Sammy, he rushed into the room that had to be Sammy's bedroom. 

When he got there, it was like a living flashback to the night that their mom died. 

Sammy was on the bed staring up in horrified shock at his girl, who was stuck to the ceiling burning -just like their mom had been - while the other guy was screaming gibberish at her and waving around his stick like it could actually do something. 

The guy might have been bat-shit insane, but he didn't seem to give a damn about Sammy, so Dean grabbed his brother up and dragged him out of the room just as the fire seemed to flare from the girl. 

ブレンキン 

Pulling Sammy down to the street, Dean checked him over, and shoved him into the Impala, before turning to watch for the crazy to come out. 

You didn't have to be a hunter to know that you never turn your back on crazy. 

He watched and waited, certain that the man wouldn't just abandon a sweet ride... and waited... and waited, until Sammy grabbed his arm. 

"Dean, that was the guy. The one she'd been talking to earlier. He's still... I think he's trying to get her down. We've got to help him." 

"What?" 

"Dean! He'll be killed up there." 

A quick glance in Sammy's direction to see that his brother was already starting to crawl out made up Dean's mind. If anyone had to go back into the building to pull out a babbling crazy, it wasn't going to be Sam. 

"Stay Here!" Dean ordered, using his you-move-and-I'll-beat-the-crap-out-of-you-just-for-the-fun-of-it voice, then slammed the door and ran without waiting for Sam's answer. 

Sam had been right. 

However the guy had done it, when Dean got back to the room, he had Jess pulled up into his lap, still burning with a strange fire that should have lit the man's clothes up. His dark head curled over his shoulder, the man was rocking her as he sobbed out words that Dean only vaguely recognized as Latin and waved his stick to no result. 

Fire was still climbing down the walls as he ran forward and tried to pull him away from the burning girl making - Dean's heartbeat speed with panic. 

If it hadn't been for the panic, though, he probably wouldn't have been able to drag the man, who desperately clutched her to him when he realized what Dean intended, away from her and practically throw him over his shoulder in a fireman's carry. 

Ceiling timbers fell, narrowly missing Dean as he ran with his extra burden, but they were nothing compared to the explosion that threw them both to the ground and momentarily knocked him out. 

ブレンキン 

"Dean! Dean!" Sammy's voice sounded fragile and panicky as Dean came to again. 

"Yeah, yeah. I'm good." Dean gasped, pulling away the oxygen mask that someone had forced over his face. 

"Easy fella. You almost got yourself killed trying to go back in there," coaxed a fireman, who was pressing a hand into the center of Dean's chest. 

"I'm fine!" He growled pushing the hand and the mask again, even as the fireman snorted. 

"Course you are! It's perfectly normal to pass out from smoke inhalation. Look whatever." The man cut Dean off when he realized that Dean was about to protest. 

"If you're good, you can go, but you'll need to keep an eye on him," the fireman turned and ordered Sammy. 

"If he shows any of the signs of a concussion or internal injuries that I warned you to watch for, get him to a hospital fast." 

"I will, Sir. I promise." 

When the fireman left them alone, Dean pushed himself up and scanned the area. 

"How's the guy? Did they take him off to the hospital already?" 

"No, Dean. He just vanished." 

"What! How did he get away so quick." 

"No, you don't understand. He didn't get away. He just vanished." 

"Come on Sammy, you're sounding like you might be the one with the concussion." 

"No, I'm serious. He was thrown down just like you were. Just before the engines turned the corner, he pulled something out of his saddlebag and threw it over him and his bike, and he just vanished. I don't think he's left though. I didn't hear the motor start up, and I don't think he was in the shape to ride anywhere. Not for long anyway." 

ブレンキン 

Remembering where he'd seen the bike go down, Dean walked toward the open space as casually as he could, as though he were just another bystander watching the firemen at work, until his foot caught on something that didn't seem to be there – something that grunted softly, painfully, on a breath that sounded almost like a sob.


	8. From Dreams to Ashes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"We are born helpless. As soon as we are fully conscious  
>  we discover loneliness..."_
> 
> C.S. Lewis, _Transposition and Other addresses_  
> 

It was well after dark when constant hissing, popping, and crackling of burning timbers and substructure finally gave way to the onslaught of water – hissing resentfully as the fire engines' insistent siege and the rapidly dwindling source of fuel wore the fire into submission. For a time, the firefighters stumbled through the burnt out shell of the apartment that Sam had shared with Jess, like soldier ants swarming in defense of their nest searching for any remaining threat - uncertain of their victory- until each individual ant had confirmed for certain that the threat has passed.

Watching almost dispassionately, from a distance that had far more to do with the numbness that had settled into his soul in the time between Dean dragging him out of their apartment and the sudden cessation of the hissing, popping, and crackling that had for a time seem almost endless, Sam barely flinched on the odd occasions that he heard the now-charcoal relics of his former life crunching beneath their boots. If the officer questioning him noticed his distraction, he said nothing of it, but continued patiently with his questions, never precisely pushing for his answers, but waiting insistently nevertheless. 

Sam had, somehow, found himself himself strangely busy amidst the numbness: answering questions for the police, for the counselor sent from the school, for the neighbors, for their friends who'd heard the news and come by, for the reporters... On other days, he might have felt uncomfortable about the half attention that he was giving everyone who was attempting to speak with him, but at the moment, he couldn't seem to break his eyes away from the strange transformation of his apartment into a ruin.

From his emotional distance, it struck him for a brief moment, like he was watching entropy take over an ancient temple – a temple to Athena or Venus – that had once held life and love for its queen, and now marble had turned to rubble and stone, pillars to scarred columns, gifts and herbs to dust, wood beams to ash, textbooks and journals to ash, Jess's collection of museum brochures to ash, the souvenirs they'd collected from street fairs to embers, and the small nightstand they had found discarded on one of the little side streets of the "Faculty Ghetto" to cinders floating in the blue black sky like ghostly drift of snowflakes... 

He couldn't even take his eyes away when Dean tried to talk to him, murmuring something about a weird poncho and a motorcycle because somewhere during those hours, it began to sink in - Jess was dead. 

She was dead. 

He wouldn't be able to watch her suck the tip of her pen any more, then blush and duck her head when he caught her at it, or try to figure out what was going on in her mind when she sometimes paused when she was writing in her journal to stare at a bird feather that they had found on one of their many walks along the beach, which she had whimsically stuck into a small perfume jar as though it were a quill for ink. 

The police officer who'd been questioning him sighed when Sam mentioned that and asked him again for the name of the apartment manager. 

"Terrie Colburn, I think." Sam was too distracted to completely notice when the police officer shot his partner a significant glance. 

Dean must have caught it though because when Sam tuned back in, the officer was explaining to Dean: "... ... that he has these college kids over a barrel. It's too expensive to go somewhere else, and most of them are too wrapped up in homework or partying to notice that he's not keeping things up to code if they even know what code looks like. They don't find out until it's too late, like when there's a short or a water line break and they lose everything."

"This isn't the first death either:" the officer continued, " two years back, or so, one little girl had just come back after spending the summer with her parents and was trying to light the pilot light on the stove, everyone thinks... at least from where we found her, it's the most likely scenario. Her family suggested that he hadn't turned the gas off the way she told them he said he had. It fits with what else we know. The explosion killed her, her room mate, and some girls in the apartment above who'd complained to their families about the odor all throughout the complex. The families to a one said the kids had complained to Colburn. Only way he stayed out of prison for it was that no one had firm proof of the complaints and the building had been inspected just before by a real screw up of an inspector." 

"Is that what caused the fire then?" Sam asked numbly. He knew or thought he knew what had caused the fire, but they needed to know what the police thought had happened. 

"Probably shouldn't tell you this, but yeah it's close to the only thing that fits. The fire's burning too hot and fast not to have had an accelerant, but it's burning too evenly for someone to have poured one around, that and -from what the fire marshal can tell- the starting point was from the bedroom ceiling – not a likely place for anyone to try to start a fire. Fire Marshal thinks it's probably faulty wiring and substandard paint and wall board. You never can tell what those imported construction materials have in them. Just because they're cheaper does not mean they are worth putting up." 

"I know you've got more questions for my brother," Dean commented carefully. 

"But..." the officer prompted. 

"But," his brother agreed before continuing, "I figured Sammy would be coming back to the motel with me after we're done here, only..." 

"Only what?" 

"Only I don't want Sammy trying to drive, but I don't take a chance leaving my bike here. It's a classic. Is there any chance I could ride it to the motel an walk back while you finish up with him?" 

Sam stared at Dean curiously, until it dawned on him that Jess's friend had been on a bike and that Dean had said something odd earlier about the man's motorcycle and some kind of robe. 

フレンキン 

Just after the emergency counselor, called in by Stanford's student services, had given Sam his card and taken Dean aside for a moment speaking quietly about shock and trauma and services available, Dean had said something odd. Sam overheard Dean promising to talk him into calling the counselor in the morning, but doubted, from the look that the man gave him, that the man would be holding his breath until he called. It pretty fair assumption on the counselor's part; Dean was probably the last person on earth who'd recommend counseling to anyone... but given the environment they'd grown up in Sam couldn't really blame him. It wasn't that he didn't care about how Sam was...just how they'd been raised. 

"What a quack! What? Seriously, Sammy, he made you sound like you belong on Oprah. Anyway, I want to show you something; come take a look. You've gotta see this. That guy... he didn't disappear; he's hiding under this funky sheet of something, except it's not a sheet, it has a hood like some kind of bath robe or a cloak or like a rain poncho or something. Seriously, Sammy you've got to see this. Sammy... Earth to Sammy. Man, come on. I know..." 

Sam wasn't really certain what Dean was going to say he knew, but when he'd turned from watching to firefighters to look at Dean, Dean had gone silent and shook his head. 

"You know what, never mind. I'll take care of it. You just be careful of what you say to anyone. You know how they would take what we saw up in there. Just say that you were so tired after our hunting trip that you just went in and crashed and woke up to find the room on fire. Nothing else. Don't say anything else." 

Sam's response had been the only one he could dredge up before turning back to the fire: a nod and "yeah, okay." 

フレンキン 

"... want Sammy trying to drive, but I don't wanna take a chance leaving my bike here, either. It's a classic. Any chance I could ride it to the motel an walk back while you finish up with him?" 

"An you think it'll be safer sitting in a motel parking lot?" The officer challenged suspiciously. 

Even as numb as he felt, Sam couldn't help but groan softly as Dean put on a mischievous grin and stage whispered, "Oh hell no! But, locked up in the motel room, it should be just fine." 

"Dean!" Sam huffed. He couldn't believe Dean was so blatantly making plans to take the stranger's bike, but couldn't bring it up in front of the officer, which might have been half the reason that Dean had brought it up when he did... So that Sam couldn't argue him out of taking it. 

Sam had no idea how Jess's friend had disappeared, but Dean was right; it looked to be a classic, and he was bound to come back for it. There was nothing he could say for it though that wouldn't arouse the officer's suspicion that the fire was more than it appeared, and in turn, he and Dean more involved than they appeared. Still, the officer had noticed his huff, so he went with the only thing he could think of to cover. 

"You can't just park your bike inside the room. What if it leaks something?" 

"Dude, you haven't seen the carpet. It would help." 

"Okay, okay, " The officer answered with a tolerantly exasperated expression that was just slightly short of a smile. "But we're almost done here so... Ken, get over here." 

When a younger officer broke away from the group handling crowd control and came over, the man who'd been questioning Sam told him to follow Dean on the bike to the motel room, and give him a ride back. 

"Front seat or back?" Officer Ken asked, drawing an exasperated sigh from the older officer. 

"Front. If it was the back, Ken, he wouldn't be going anywhere." 

"It's okay, kiddo," Dean commented to the younger man, who was stammering his apologies... clearly a rookie ... and smacked him lightly on the shoulder as they walked away. "It's a smart question." 

"Interesting brother you've got there." The older officer eyed Dean before turning back to Sam. 

"Yeah. I guess." 

"So, you said you and you're brother went hunting this weekend? You don't strike me as the hunting type." 

"I'm not." Sammy answered, honestly, "but he and I don't really have much of anything else in common anymore. Our dad ... our dad used to take us hunting when we were younger – sort of a family thing - and there's not really all that much here he'd find interesting to do other than maybe go out to a bar, but Jess wouldn't... ." 

"I understand, were things good between you and Miss Moore?" 

"Yeah... They were. I... I had an appointment for a Law School Interview tomorrow at 10:00. We were going to lunch afterward to celebrate. She – Sh – She was certain that I'd get in. Even bet that I'd get a full ride." Sam answered, digging into his pocket for the ring box he'd hurriedly dug out of his canvas bag just before going into the apartment - in hopes that surprising Jess with it might go part way to cooling her anger at him. 

He studied it silently, almost unable to continue until the officer had raised a knowing eyebrow, "Even if I didn't get in... I was going to make it something to celebrate. We'd only talked about it a couple of times, and she wasn't putting pressure on me, but I was pretty certain that she wanted ... that we both wanted ..." 

"I'm sorry son." The officer sympathized, "May I see?" 

"Yes, of course," Sam handed it to the man and just barely suppressed the urge to snatch it back when he realized that it was the only link he had left to Jess. 

"It's a very nice ring. Very artistic. What's this symbol? It looks familiar." 

"It's a variation of a Luckenbooth broach. She'd lived in Scotland when she was younger and seemed to have fond memories of her time there, but doesn- didn't like claddagh rings. Her first boyfriend gave her one and ... ..." Sam looked up, embarrassed as he realized that he'd been rambling, before he continued, "Anyway, I did a little research on Scottish wedding traditions and found this. I was pretty sure she'd recognize it; she liked researching everything. It was supposed to ... to ... be good luck. I..." 

Sam's voice suddenly ran out on him as he stared at the ring, remembering all of the thoughts that had gone through his mind when he'd read that the small brooches were worn to protect against evil spirits, or "the attention of the fairies". 

"Okay, I think we have enough, for now." The man smiled gently and closed the ring box carefully, before handing it back to Sam before he continued, "You're brother will probably be back in a few minutes. Maybe there's a neighbor you could stay with until..." 

"If it's okay, I'd just like to sit in the car. Everyone's... all our neighbors are nice enough, but I – I don't really feel up to talking." 

"That's fine. Ken will know where you two are, if we have any other questions." 

フレンキン 

Just as the officer had suggested, Dean had returned in just a few minutes, with out saying much else, told him to get his feet in the car, then closed the door and rounded the impala. He stayed silent for a long while, until they were far out of sight of anyone who'd been at the site of the fire, before he finally spoke. 

"You two rest. We'll wait to talk until we get back to the motel." 

Before Sam could ask Dean who else he thought he was talking to, the emptiness in the back seat shifted slightly and a thin gap opened slightly like someone peaking between curtains. Although he could barely see into the gap, enough of a thin pale face showed that he could see it nod, before the gap closed again. 


	9. An Unwilling Survivor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

>   
> _It is easier to find men who will volunteer to die,_  
>  than to find those who are willing to endure pain with patience.  
> Julius Caesar

As they drove, without a distraction when he seemed to hear every shift of cloth, every click of metal jostling in the car, every rattle of the window in its frame as it rode over a bump, Harry was almost certain that he would never truly hear silence again.

He didn't particularly enjoy silence, or find any comfort from it. It gave him too much time to think, too much time to remember, too much time to feel, too much time to exist – activities all that held no appeal for him at the moment. At the same time, though, every small hitch of breath; every brush of hair against the collar of the man who looked back in the rear view to watch him, invisible as he was beneath his invisibility cloak; every bump in the road that jarred the radio kept him from zoning out – kept him present, which he also, very much did not want to be...

He did not want to be... he very much did not want to be... anything. Yet he was forced to be.

Forced by the prophecy; 

Forced by the debts he owed; 

Forced by a purpose he had foolishly chosen when he could have gone on to his parents, Sirius, Remus; 

Forced by the man who had found him laying in the road beneath his invisibility cloak, too weak to move, too strong to trigger the Goblin's portkey, too tired to continue, too burdened to let go. 

Forced to be present, here, and alive and forced to watch the road pass by from beneath his invisibility cloak because the man had half picked him up – half dragged him to a car and pushed him in the back seat, then pushed him in. 

Sometime later, he heard the familiar sound of Sirius's motorcycle, so different and distinguishable from the modern American 'bikes', but he couldn't bring himself to care that it was being stolen. If he started to care about that, he knew it wouldn't stop at just that. There were far more important matters to care about, matters that would tear him apart, matters that would shred his soul and perhaps his sanity, and then where would he be. 

Shying away from thinking about the possible matters that he might care about, Harry found himself drifting as he stared at the man Hermione had fallen in love with. His profile looked kind, despite what he'd said to Hermione. Dark haired. Young. It looked like he smiled easily, possibly laughed easily. In the brief time that they'd had to speak before being interrupted, Hermione had said that Stanford was challenging, so he was likely smart as well. Harry didn't think that she'd have settled for anything less, once she'd gotten over her ... previous infatuation. He'd probably been smart enough and observant enough to notice that she wasn't quite who she seemed to be, even if she hadn't been practicing magic any more. It may have started him to wonder, to wonder and to worry...It made sense, but he'd obviously come back, and staring at him now, Harry could read how much he cared about her. He was devastated, carrying the same haunted expression on his lips and in the reflection of his eyes that Harry could remember Bill wearing when he didn't think he was being observed. 

"Eyes to the front, Kiddo." The other man commented softly, breaking the silence, his gaze in the mirror impossibly accurate, as if he could see through the cloak. 

"Dean..." Hermione's boyfriend started softly. 

"When we get back to the room." The man, Dean, answered with quiet command, reminding Harry too much of Bill. 

Hermione's boyfriend seemed ready to protest, but was silenced by a look from this Dean and they returned to a quiet that seemed closer to silence than it had before. 

  
フレンキン  


As Dean held the door open and waved Harry in before the other brunette, Harry was startled to see his motorcycle propped beside the door to what was likely the a restroom. 

"May I?" Harry asked quietly, gesturing toward the motorcycle luggage compartments. 

"Yeah, go ahead." Dean responded too easily, and Harry soon understood why. The roll of potion tools and bottles had been taken out of his bags. 

"The roll that was in here," He remarked cautiously, noticing out of the corner of his eye as Dean stiffened immediately "In the second or third slot over, there is a medicine vial, with a milky blue serum in it, may I have it please? I'm overdue my dose by at least three hours." 

"Uh... sure." Dean answered after a moment, seeming surprised that Harry wasn't throwing a fit or demanding his things back. Harry understood too well though, and couldn't fault them for their caution. There was no reason for them to realize that they had put themselves in far more danger by withholding the serum than they would have been giving him access to his knives. The longer he stayed off of the magical suppression serum the more easily Tom's assassins could track him, and they were not likely to leave living witnesses, muggle or no... although, Harry was beginning to suspect that they weren't exactly muggles. 

"I'll go wait in the lou, shall I?" Harry offered, passing his motorcycle, with the knowledge that they wouldn't want him to know where what they thought were his weapons were hidden. 

  
フレンキン  


"Dean! You went through his things?" The other hissed. 

"Well, I'm glad I did. He has some seriously wicked looking knives in that roll and some other things, that look pretty weird to me to." 

"Yeah, but his medicine? Taking a guy's medicine is just wrong, Dean." 

"How can you say that? You've seen what Dad's done with some of the crap he's gotten from the VA." The one named Dean answered, and Harry wondered if the man realized that he could be heard through the thin walls and doors, or if it was a thinly veiled threat. 

"Yeah, but there's no reason to think that he'd have any reason to do that to us." 

"Maybe not, but he seemed to get it, which should tell you something right there." Dean answered not as loudly, but enough for Harry to take the warning if it was intended. 

Harry was half-tempted to call out that he could hear them when a wave of dizziness swept over him, and he had to clutch the sink to stay standing. A far distant echo of laughter scraped the edge of his consciousness, informing him that reports of Hermione's death had reached Tom. He was too distant and his magic too weak for the link between he and Voldemort to flare fully, but enough of a connection was made to destabilize his frail emotional control. 

  
フレンキン  


Digging out the odd cloth roll that he had hidden deep in the dirty clothes side of his duffel bag, Dean froze suddenly as an echo of glass shattering carried into the room. Sammy jumped up when it was followed barely a second later by another, and Dean pushed him out of the way to get to the room. 

"Stay there." 

"Dean! He's ..." 

"Sammy, stay there." Dean growled. 

For all they knew, deprived of his knives, the other man had decided to break a mirror and use one of the longer shards as a knife. Pausing at the door, he leaned in close enough to listen, but only heard the sound of heavy drawn-out panting. Pushing the door open a crack, he was almost surprised to see the other leaning his forehead against the broken mirror and gripping one bleeding hand tightly in the other. Not a shard of glass to be seen in either hand. 

"What the hell?" Pushing the door open further, Dean froze as he realized that the guy was squeezing his injured hand harder. Trying to stop the bleeding possibly. 

"Sammy, get the patch up kit, and bring something for bandages," he called out the door before easing forward and catching the guy's wrist; he'd used the last of his stock of bandages cleaning Sammy up a couple days ago.. 

When he didn't resist, Dean pulled it closer and turned the hand gently to inspect it. It didn't look like anything was broken but there was at least one piece of glass in it. 

"What the hell were you trying to do?" 

"Hurt." The guy's monotone response caught Dean off-guard, and he shot a questioning look at the man's eyes, but the guy's hair was too long and blocked his view. 

"Well you sure as hell did that." 

"Not enough." 

Suddenly understanding, Dean shook his head and pulled the man's wrist to get him to follow, which he did as complacently as Sammy had when he was a kid. 

"Sit." 

After handing the man the vial that he'd asked for earlier, Dean began cleaning glass out of the long deep cut across the top of the guy's hand. It took several minutes, and Dean knew that digging the glass out had to hurt, but the guy never even flinched. 

"So, you have a name?" 

The guy was silent for a long second before he nodded. 

"Well... Mine's Dean." He prompted. 

"I know." The guy's voice was soft and hoarse, almost sounding unused. 

"Really, how?" Admittedly, it wasn't much of a conversation, but Dean suspected that getting any information out of the guy was going to be as easy as getting something out of their father. 

"In the car. He called you that." 

"Guess he did." Dean agreed, not pushing, as he carefully wrapped the guy's hand. As he did, he noticed that it was far from the guy's first scar and began to wonder if they were dealing with another hunter. That would have been an irony- for Sammy to try to get away from the life only to fall for someone tied with hunters. 

"Harry," was offered hesitantly. 

"Well, Harry, before you drink that up, do you have anything else in there that you can take to keep this from getting infected? I've got some stuff, but no idea how it will mix with that cocktail of yours." 

"Don't have a choice: have to take this." Rolling his head back before Dean could stop him, Harry poured the vial into his mouth with a look that ranked its taste somewhere between bog water and zombie droppings. If it was supposed to help the guy, though, Harry was taking the wrong stuff because – almost as soon as it was swallowed – the guy had collapsed forward, even paler than before. 

"I guess that means we'll take turns?" Sammy finally spoke up with a reluctant glance at the only other unoccupied bed. 

"You can have it." Dean offered quietly trying to indicate with a glance at the their new acquaintance that he had no intention of closing his eyes until they knew more about the guy. Dean was beginning to get the impression that the guy wasn't dangerous, at least not to them, but until he knew for certain he wasn't going to let his guard down – not with Sammy around to get hurt. 

"No, you didn't sleep the entire ride back." Sammy argued crossing his arms and gritting his jaws like he did when he was ready to be stubborn. "I'll take first watch." 

"Fine." Dean huffed, knowing he was really was too tired and figuring that a short nap would let him wake up if something came up. 

  
フレンキン  


Something came up, barely two hours later, when his brother's soft cursing woke him from a sleep plagued with images of his mother on the ceiling of the bedroom that Sammy and he shared as a child. 

"What's up?" He asked as he sat up. 

Sammy looked even worse than he had before and staring back at him almost blindly. 

"What is it?" 

"I – I found this on our kitchen table, with some cookies. I thought – I thought she'd made them. You know, to say she forgave me. She doesn't ... didn't cook much, but sometimes..." Sammy trailed off with a troubling look of helplessness as he extended a bent and smudged envelope and note. 

"Miss you!" the envelope said. Sweet enough and sad in hindsight, but not enough to get Sammy worked up like this. 

When he got to the note though, beginning to read it quietly out loud, his throat tightened. 

_"To My Dearest Sister,_  
  
I can't tell you how much I've missed having you at my side. You were always the smartest of us, and I know that I wouldn't have made half of the mistakes I've made if you'd been around... But keeping you safe - and happy- has always been more important. 

_I didn't stop to ask if you're happy. Are you? You looked happy. I hope so. I'd like to think that your boyfriend is good for you, and that I just showed up on a bad day, but you have to be careful, Mione, especially now._

_No one knows where you are, and for as long as I can, I'll do what I can to keep you safe, but you need to know there's a good chance that I won't be able to much longer. Tommy has friends who've come to this side of the pond to take care of business for him, and they've nearly caught me half a dozen times._

_This last was worst, and I only made it out of New York with the help of some well-paid friends._

_Mione, I don't know if you can trust your bloke or not; but, if you can, bring him to Shaman Jack's place on the night we ate the last of the jellies, Bring him, and I'll explain it all._

_If not, still come and between the three of us, we'll find some way to make sure you're safe- no matter what._

_Mione, I know I've probably never said this, but you've been the best thing in my life. I love you, Sis. I never say it, but I do._

_Your brother,_

_H~"_

  


"H stands for Harry, I guess." Dean commented uselessly. There wasn't a doubt in his mind that the guy passed out unconscious was Jess's brother. He could have written a note exactly like it to Sammy... well not exactly cause Sammy was a guy, but he felt the same things about his brother that the guy had written about his sister, and it would have taken a lot more than a broken mirror to make him forget the pain he would have been feeling if Sammy had been the one killed instead of Jess. Probably for the guy too, if he hadn't already been hurt and if the stuff hadn't knocked him out. 

"Well shit." He cursed. That didn't come close to touching it, but anything else would have come out loud enough to wake the guy, and having him wake up to catch them reading a personal note he wrote to his late sister was probably something they didn't want to happen. 

"It gets worse." 

He didn't see how it could until Sammy handed him a wallet-sized photo of a family. The guy was sitting in the center with a sandy haired child in his lap and a child's crayon labeling him "Dady n Tedy"; Jess was standing behind him beside a tall red head labeled, "Mine nd Jorg'; On the other side another redhead had his arms wrapped around a rather georgeous blonde labeled "Bil n Floor." 

"Turn it over." Sammy's voice was dry and scratchy the way it got when he was fighting not to cry (damn their father), and Dean turned the photo over with dread. 

On the reverse side, the names were listed again, spelled correctly and in a more formal, elegant, adult script: 

  


_Fleur Delacour Weasley-Black –  
February 17th , 1976 – June 14, 2004 (Killed by D. Umbridge) _

_George Weasley-Black –  
September 28, 1978 – Missing, presumed dead (January 23, 2005) _

_William Weasley-Black –  
November 29, 1970 – October 12, 2005 (Killed by D. Umbridge) _

_Teddy Lupin Black –  
April 3, 1998 – October 12, 2005 (Killed by D. Umbridge) _

  


"When he said they'd.. kissed, they'd been kissed... he meant..." Sammy stammered horrified.

"Yeah, I got what they meant." 

Kissed, Mafia style, like Mike Corlione kissed his brother Fredo, before he was executed, and this guy... Harry Black was the last one left. 


	10. Reeling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

>   
> _Having known unspeakable tortures_  
>  _at the hands of our tormentors,_  
>  _We, the free witches and wizards_  
>  _of these United Colonies_  
>  _Do hereby foreswear and affirm_  
>  _in magic and blood that_  
>  _Neither we nor our descendants will, henceforth,_  
>  _Suffer the evils of persecution,_  
>  _nor feed its ravening hunger,_  
>  _We shall - therefore – censure and revoke_  
>  _the magics of any,_  
>  _Who – by breaking this covenant of secrecy –_  
>  _do endanger the security,_  
>  _Avocation, or prosperity of our brethren –_  
>  _exposing them to the fears,_  
>  _Resentments and reprisals of our non-magical brethren._  
>  (Declaration of the Concordance of Secrecy, Wizarding Congress, United Colonies, 1759)  
> 

Harry's internal alarm woke him well before dawn and pushed him out of the motel bed and into the bathroom, where he carefully began to pick up the broken glass, barely musing over the fact that, more and more, as the anchors that tied him to those few years he'd spent at Hogwarts... fell away, he found himself returning into the patterns of his early life. 

After carefully wiping away the dried blood and grime encrusting the mirror, Harry gently swept the broken bits of mirror into his hand and laid them on the counter. The motel supplied towel was cheap and stiff, and the bottle of soap was terribly watered down, barely even good enough to use to clean the rest of the counter. Even the soap stand was ringed in a brown glaze that took almost two minutes of scrubbing with the dampened towel to clean. After a quick glance into the lav, he decided to put that off until he had some decent cleaner and a brush. A quick spray down of the shower stall and doors soon convinced him that it would require more effort and stronger cleanser than he had available. Finally, sighing as he stretched and clenched his cut hand, with a pang of regret that he couldn't take healing potions with his magic suppressed, Harry gave up on his seemingly pointless cleaning and turned back to the one thing that he would be able to improve. 

Gathering the shards of the mirror into a small mound, he retrieved one of the small bag of crystals that George had created for him, to give him access to magic when his own was suppressed. The mound of mirror shards was small enough and of similar make up that it would only need a few crystals to trigger the spell he wanted, but he set two concentric circles of six and seven, just to be sure because there might have been some dropped shards he hadn't found. 

"Reparo," he whispered softly, triggering the stones, with brief instance of longing. Although he rarely dwelt on it, Harry missed the feeling of drawing on his core magics - even just for the small tasks that he would have normally done by hand. 

"Shit- holy shit! Dean! Dean, wake up!" the brunette that Dean had called 'Sammy' shouted from just a few feet behind him startling Harry. 

"What! What is it?" Dean appeared beside the brunette a moment later, stumbling somewhat, on bare feet, as he shook off sleep. 

"He's a warlock, or something. He just did a ritual to fix the mirror. I saw it." 

"A ritual to fix the mirror? You gotta be kidding me." 

"No, look." 

As he gathered the crystals and dropped them back in their pouch, Harry could almost feel Deans eyes traveling from his back to the mirror. 

"Listen," Harry began carefully, hoping that his conclusion was right and that he wasn't about to break the the Americans' statue of secrecy, "I'm not a warlock..." 

"Bullshit! The proof's right in front of our eyes. Now, drop that bag and keep your hands where I can see them." Dean growled impressively, causing Harry to look up in shock - almost expecting Dean's eyes to have turned golden. 

"No, hear me out, please. I didn't say that I didn't use magic; I'm not denying that, not at all, but that doesn't mean that I'm a warlock. Warlocks are oath-breakers; I have never broken any oath in spirit, letter, or intent." 

Snorting derisively, Dean countered, "with the types of bargains you had to make to get your magic - that's not exactly something I'm happy to hear." 

"Bargain? I've never made a bargain for my magic. I don't know what they teach you about magic on this side of the pond, but atavistic magics are just one way to increase your natural core magics and not the preferred or most effective method either." 

"If you didn't make a deal with a demon, how do you explain being able to do your mumbo jumbo?" 

Trying to suppress his shock, Harry backed a step - running into the jon behind him- and sat heavily, dropping his forehead in his hands. 

"Merlin, oh Merlin's ghost, I broke the statute of Secrecy. Bloody hell, I'm such a stupid idiot. You don't know anything about magic, do you? Damn it, damn it, damn it. Not anything... " dropping his head back against the tiles behind him, he pounded it lightly as he starred to chuckle "not anything at all. God, Tommy's going to love this. He won't have to do anything after all; I let my bloody big mouth do it for him..." 

Harry's chuckles broke into harsh derisive laughter and built in force until he was gulping for air but still couldn't stop. The irony was just too much, he thought, once again- he'd be the boy-who-lived because the Americans' answer to breaking the statute of secrecy was harsher - in its way- than a life sentence in azkaban; although, it was a life sentence of an entirely different sort. 

The Americans, who had been the most vocal sufferers of the purges, though not the only sufferers, instead of binding offending wizards' magics, actually stripped the magic from them -a process said to be so painful that it usually drove the former wizard insane- then without blocking their memory of once possessing bound the wizards to silence- allowing them to suffer the full knowledge of what they'd lost - without being able to express their anguish even to the family and friends who'd known of their magics. Almost as bad, having not existed in the muggle worlds records and being unskilled, without a muggle education, these former witches and wizards were often able to get only the shadiest, most demeaning forms of labor to support themselves and as a rule tended to live only a very few years after having their magics taken. 

When Tommy discovered Harry's fate, nothing on earth would compel the dark wizard to prematurely end his suffering. Riddle would probably do everything he could to guarantee that Harry lived every useless second of his remaining life, if not finding some means to extend it beyond the normal wizards lifespan. It would suit Tommy's vanity and thirst for cruelty to have Harry an undying, but helpless witness to his own immortality. 

Folding over his arms, Harry laughed until his sides ached and his voice failed him - and still he laughed. He laughed until tears ran thickly down his cheeks and his knees shook when Dean pulled him to his feet, pushed him into the shower, and turned on the cold water. 

The shock and absurdity of the cold water soaking his clothes was, finally, enough to break the laughter but not enough to close the flood gates once opened. Sliding down the tile wall behind him, he wrapped his arms around his knees and hid his face in the gap - sobbing in silent despair. 

They left him for a time before Dean stepped in and slid to the shower floor beside him then carefully laid an arm over his shoulders. Harry should have turned away. 

He knew he should have. Just staying in their proximity endangered them. They had no concept of his world or its threat to them; he should have turned away. 

  
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As the other man's shuddering sobs finally tapered off, Dean shifted uncomfortably- having gotten chilled under the still running water- and looked down to find that Harry had exhausted himself and fallen asleep, his hands still clenched almost desperately In Dean's t-shirt. 

Slipping his free hand under Harry's legs, he pushed himself up and lifted Harry with surprising ease. Apparently, keeping in shape for hunting had other benefits as well. 

"Dean! What are you doing?" Sammy demanded as he pushed by to lay Harry on the bed. It seemed pretty obvious to Dean what he was doing, so he took just a little relish in shooting Sammy his best care-to-ask-another-stupid-question smile. He was usually on the receiving end. 

"You know what I mean; he was doing magic. Why aren't we packing up and getting as far away from him as possible? He was doing magic!" 

"Yeah, Sammy, I kind of got that." 

"Did you? Because it doesn't seem like you did. He was doing magic not even twenty feet away from where we were supposed to be sleeping. If we hadn't been taking shifts, we might not even have known about it." 

"Look, Sammy, I get that he was using magic; hell, he even said as much, but come on...man, if he'd sold his soul for his magic, do you really think he'd care about leaving a broken mirror in a dive motel? Much less waste his magic fixing it?" 

"I don't know, maybe he's trying to cover his trail." 

"Yeah, cause a broken mirror in the jon of a cheap motel just screams 'dangerous warlock on the loose'." 

"Oh geez, Shut up, Dean, How should I know why he'd use magic on something like that, but you have to admit that..." 

"Oh geez... 'Geez'...Really, Sammy? What are you? A twelve year old girl? Look, I know what Dad always said about magic and the kind of people who use it, but even I've figured out that Dad doesn't know everything - not even about the stuff he knows about." 

"You did? Since when?" His brother huffed irritably- successfully distracted. 

"Oh, somewhere between the strega and the time that he bawled you out for that werewolf thing." 

"What? But that was... But you always seemed lock-step with Dad..." Sammy was so easy to bait. 

"Yeah, maybe, but it was my job to look after you; wasn't it? When Dad couldn't, and that was pretty much most of the time." 

"Then why did you always... Why did you... Didn't you ever want a normal life?" 

"Sure I did, but one thing you taught me kept me from acting on that. Dad's kinda like me, when it comes to research, get enough to work on and get to it. You were always the researcher- get all the information you can and plan it out - type. So I sort of took your lead in trying to figure out how to have normal- cause one thing I knew for sure was Dad doesn't do normal, but you seemed to want it even more than me. That's why I always made nice with foster kids and the like, cause I knew that Dad sure as hell wouldn't stop. Know what I found out, most of them didn't get adopted into nice, normal families, and the stories some of them told were pretty rough- abuse wasn't even the half of it. What was worse though was that all of them said that they didn't get to stay with their brothers or sisters. That wouldn't fly, so I let it drop." 

"I didn't know. I never guessed." 

"Well, that was kinda the point wasn't it?" 

  
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Harry silently listened to their hushed argument with an oddly mixed feeling of relief and melancholy. He'd overhead enough of their argument to realize that they fell into the Americans' strange classification of 'ambient knowledgeable'; a term that hadn't really made sense to Harry, even after the shaman had explained it, until George noticed that the examples the shaman gave all had one common quality: the American Ministry of Magic gained some unpaid benefit from the people they'd labeled under that classification. 

The Native American Weather Dancers had forestalled or lessened many natural events that would have been truly cataclysmic if they'd struck unabated. The television Psychic Network recruited, recorded, propagated, and preserved the country's most significant predictions. Television documentarians and Fiction novelists not infrequently recorded passable versions of their magical history. Hunters acted as a covert volunteer arm of the Ministry's auror corps - policing dark creatures and rogue spirits. All without the ministry having to spend a single knut on their education, recruitment, training, provision, or retirement, or in the hunters' case medical and death benefits. 

Of those few groupings, it was easy to identify which class the brothers belonged to - the Hunters- making them both serious potential threats and possible allies - if he dared drag them into his problems. 


	11. Research

**Summary for the Chapter:**

>   
>  _"Give sorrow words...That grief does not speak whispers unto the o'er-fraught heart and bid it break."_
> 
> William Shakespeare.

After glaring at the sleeping wizard until Dean finally suggested that since the "guy sounds like one of those guys from Monty Python" maybe he should look up what they thought about magic so he could talk to the guy 'in his own language", Sam blew an exasperated breath, ignored Dean's attempt at wordplay, and did a quarter turn in his seat – far enough that Dean wouldn't have room to complain, but little enough that the wizard was still well within his peripheral vision. Ignoring Dean's growl to stop sulking, he returned to the research that he'd already started (Thank you very much for the completely obvious suggestion).

He was not sulking! Admittedly, he was upset, but at least he was directing his energy to a productive purpose.

And...okay, maybe saying that he was upset was like reading the abstract of a master's thesis, but he was dealing with it. Anyway "upset" might summarize the situation with superficial accuracy, but it completely lacked any sense of illustrative evidence, causation, or even ramifications- and there were a substantial number of ramifications that Dean seemed too stubborn to consider.

Not that he had really been able to put forth a persuasive argument in support of his conviction, especially when the primary evidence of his disturbance, at least in Sam's eyes, was his complete inability to finish a single sentence in a single attempt.

It wasn't for the lack sufficient material to discuss: hell, if he wanted to, at that very moment, he could very easily sit down and write a fully fleshed essay on nine different subjects related to their current circumstances: 1) coping with the loss of an intimate partner, 2) coping with the revelation of a missing family member, 3) recovering from an act of unexpected violence, 4) survivor's guilt, 5) the stages of grief, 6) the ramifications of maintaining a double identity, 7) discovering your significant other has been living a double life, 8) dealing with supernatural events, 9) recognizing and revising personal mythologies.

No, if anything, he had too much to say- too many thoughts that would interrupt one another before their completion.

Nor was it due to a physical deficiency of any sort. Although he knew that he was feeling moderately detached from everything that had happened, Sam recognized that if anything, he was physically the healthiest of the three of them.

Dean was sleeping far too much for Sam's comfort, and the emt's list of danger signs related to concussions played through Sam's thoughts every time Dean groaned, shifted in his sleep, or stumbled. 

Their ... guest, Harry, was in even worse shape, which was the only reason that Sam had given in to Dean's decision to stay close to the guy, even after they discovered that he was a sorcerer. Well that and the fact that he wasn't entirely certain that they wouldn't be hunting the 'wizard' if he were up and around.

Dean claimed that he only wanted to hang around to get the full scoop on what had happened to Jess, but as far as Sam was concerned, he knew why Jess had died. Whatever her brother had gotten into to get his magic had made his family targets and would probably keep going until it got him, too.

And... Okay, he had taken enough pre-law courses to know that he didn't have enough evidence to support his theory, but he'd seen his father take up a hunt on less... and be right. 

The timing was too suspicious. Her brother had been there just two days before, giving whatever was after him time to find Jess, just like it had found those others named on the back of the photo.

As much as he knew he shouldn't feel the way he did, as he thought about it, Sam was only too happy to let the man face the consequences of dabbling with the occult. In his eyes, people who willingly put their family at risk, just for power, deserved every bad thing that happened to them. It was Jess and the others, like her, who didn't deserve what had happened. But Jess had suffered for it - no, she'd more than suffered for his greed - she'd died for it, and in Sam's eyes, that was unforgivable.

Jess was dead; the future he wanted with her - equally dead, and Sam couldn't even let himself give in to his grief for her because Dean wasn't thinking straight, might have a serious concussion, and no way in hell was he going to let his guard down with Black around.

  
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"Give it a rest, okay, Sammy?" Dean huffed.

"What?"

"The evil eye. Dude, I can feel your glare from here. He's not going to go all Norman Bates on us."

"Norman ..."

"Psycho! Dude, do you not know anything about the classics?"

"I suspect that our definitions of classic vary a bit." Sam answered dryly.

"Movies, music, and cars, Man, those are the only things worth being called classics." Dean jibed, trying Sam knew, to work a smile from him.

Rolling his eyes, Sam murmured, "riiight" and clicked the top link in the search results and scanned the page.

Nothing.

With a practiced eye, he weeded out the obviously amateur new age 'wannabes', flea market spiritualists, and online metaphysical shops. Occasionally, you could find some true information on those sites, but ninety percent of the time they were just filled with cut and paste quotes from popular new age articles. Far more informative were sites that analyzed the usage of mythology in popular literature, online museums, and mythology archives. 

Three pages into the search, and seven minutes into Dean's rhapsodizing on the unique features of his favorite obsessions, Sam sat up straight and re-read the epigrammatic poem in the header of a website describing the metaphysical properties of various species of wood used in the construction of 'wands'.

"What is it?" Dean asked sharply, immediately noting the change in posture and attention.

"I – I think I may have found something." 

"Guessed that." Dean commented with a snort sitting up on the bed, "wouldn't have asked, otherwise." 

"Yeah, I know." Sam acknowledged, reading the epigram again. 

"Well, come on, give!" Dean ordered. 

"You may have been right," Sam acknowledged reluctantly, before reading – by way of explanation, "Magic is born in the baby's breath; grown by learning, loan, gift, and theft; bought …" 

"By sacrifice..." the wizard croaked in a voice that sounded beyond exhaustion, despite the fact that – if he wasn’t faking it- he should have had over ten hours of sleep, "transcendent of death. Magic is blessed in a baby's breath." 

"Sounds like you've heard it before." Dean muttered in a half laugh. 

"A couple of times. Yeah." The wizard agreed dryly. 

"So," Sam interrupted, not interested in the two having a bonding moment. "Which one are you?" 

The wizard half-barked a quiet, somewhat bitter laugh. "All of them."


	12. Mapping the Past

**Summary for the Chapter:**

>   
> _“Moral wounds have this peculiarity - they may be hidden, but they never close; always painful, always ready to bleed when touched, they remain fresh and open in the heart.”_  
>  ― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

The wizard half-barked a quiet, somewhat bitter laugh. "All of them."

"You give us an answer like that, and you expect us to believe that you didn't sell your soul for your magic." Sam challenged snidely. How stupid did Black really think they were? 

"I don't expect you to believe anything that I say." The wizard answered, seeming wearily sincere. "Honestly, your smartest move would be to avoid the risks of being near me." 

"Is that a threat?" Sam growled. 

"No, just reality. Just reality. You were special to Mione. I almost didn't think she'd ever be open to – to anyone, again. I don't know what I'm going to do next, but she'd never forgive me if I let you get hurt." 

"That only sounds like a somewhat nicer version of a threat." Sam snapped, ignoring Dean's irritated expression. 

"No. I promise you it's not. I don't want anyone else hurt because of me, but I'm not going to lie to you either. We left England to escape an enemy, and he won't stop until everyone who stood against him is dead. It doesn't matter how many innocents are hurt or killed." 

"Back up here," Dean interrupted before Sam could comment. "What did you mean that you're all of them. After that, who's this enemy of yours? What do you mean everyone who stood against him? It sounds like you're talking about some sort of war." 

The wizard's expression was solemn and pale; staring at Dean, he pushed himself up in the bed before nodding wearily. 

"They're all tied together, and yes, there was a war. You shouldn't get involved, but I – I guess I should tell someone. Someone should know. I don't know how many of us are left, or how you could even get a message to anyone, but I don't know how much longer I can keep ahead of them, either, and someone should know how to stop him." 

One of the first lessons that their father had taught Sam and Dean about getting information was to never push witnesses who were already half-convinced to tell their story anyway; the more they thought it was their idea, the more information they inevitably gave. With that lesson well-ingrained and in the front of their minds, neither moved, commented, or even looked too long in his direction so that he wouldn't feel as if he was being pressured. 

"Mag-ic is born," he began, singing softly, "in a ba-by's breath; gro-wn by lear-n-ing, loan, gift, and theft; bought by sacrifice... transc-end-ed by death. Magic is blessed in a baby's breath." 

Sam had to admit, the wizard's voice wasn't precisely horrible; although, he did wonder if the man wasn't singing it to soften the uglier truths that he didn't want them to think too deeply about. 

"There was a time when Mione and I... and someone else... well, we were going through a really dark time and were having to hide out in the woods to keep from being found. I was constantly worried that I couldn't do what was expected of me, that I'd let everyone down, that they would be hurt, and it would all be for nothing. A lot of nights I had trouble sleeping, and Mione would stay up to make sure I got to sleep. For some reason, she didn't like her voice and never really wanted to, but sometimes, when things got bad, she'd sing to me until I could sleep. That was one of the little songs she'd sing; said it was important to remember the source and cost of magic, as if I could ever forget. Still, sometimes it helped, and for a little while, I'd feel just a little bit better." 

"Magic can seem like a blessing sometimes. It did when I first learned about it, at least; the whole wizarding world seemed... well magical. So different than what I'd known before, but it wasn't very long before I learned about how ugly it could be, too. I didn't even know that magic really existed until I was eleven, much less the ugly side of it, but it was with me right from the start. I was born with magic, just like my father and my mother. Magic's born in a baby's breath." He lifted a finger, ticking off the first quality. 

"My father was the heir of family that has been magical for enough generations to be called a pure blood. My mother, though, was the first person in her family to ever be born with magic. In the British wizarding world, there's a lot of prejudice toward people who come from non-magical, non-pureblood families. There are a lot of wizards who don't want the two groups to mix, including a dark wizard named Tom Riddle, who became what we call a dark lord. My parents and some people who wanted to protect muggleborns, like Mione, and halfbloods, like myself, resisted his influence and fought his efforts, and a war broke out. Our side was losing, and things were looking really bad. From what I understand, it looked like Tom was going to win – until this seer, who hadn't made any true prophesies before that predicted that the person who could stop Tom was about to be born on a certain day to people who'd defied him three times and lived. There were only two of us, who fit that description, and the Death Eaters came after us.' 

'Tom, in particular, came after my parents on Halloween night. I don't know whether it was him or one of his men, who killed my father, but I do know that Tom got past my father and came up to my nursery. One of his men, who knew my mother when she was young had begged him to spare her, and he was going to if she would step aside, but she didn't. She sacrificed herself for me, and in doing so, triggered one of the oldest forms of magical protection known that protected me from him for almost 14 years: Magic bought by sacrifice." 

He ticked off the quality lifting a second finger, and was about to continue in his explanation until he noticed that both brothers had practically frozen mid breath and were staring at each other with disconcerted expressions. 

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"Halloween..." Sam whispered in the same breath that Dean whispered, "Mom."

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Uncertain what Halloween might mean to them, Harry paused at their interruption to study the brothers' expressions. 

For a moment it had seemed as if they might know something, but that couldn't be possible. They were, to all intents and purposes, muggles... And even if Harry had followed a solid lead coming to the states to search for hidden horcruxes, neither Tom nor any of his lackies would have stooped to associate with muggles, in general - much less foreign muggles. 

As unlikely as it was, it hardly mattered whether they did know something or not; even if they did know something, there wasn't a hope in hades that they would trust him with their secrets, and -having taken the magic suppression potions for months- his magic was far too weak and his skills too fallow for him to use legillimency to any meaningful purpose. 

Waiting until their matched stares seemed to come to some form of resolution and they turned back to him, Harry closed his fingers into a fist that he uncurled slowly, finger by finger as he recounted, "that covers magic by birth and by sacrifice, then when I was eleven, the leader of the group who had been fighting Tom the first time around saw to it that I went to school in the wizarding world.” 

It was painful even to think of Hermione and Ron and how close they had been those first years, but knowing what Hermione’s boyfriend had thought about his involvement with Hermione, Harry felt like it would be doing her a dishonor not to explain how they had met and how Hermione had become as close as a sister… closer than his ‘real’ family. 

“Hermione, that’s where we met. We didn’t hit it off quite at first, but by the end of our first year, she was already dearer to me than any of my aunt and uncle’s family, throughout school, we were almost inseparable,” He trailed off for a moment, feeling her boyfriend’s glare on him, then rushed to explain when he realized how that could have sounded. "Not like that, though, she was… it was as if she was my big sister, nagging … me to do my homework, making sure that I got care packages of food over the holidays when I went home, like that… any way … " He paused to uncurl a third finger, “grown by learning". 

"My second year at school, I found out that the night he killed my parents, Riddle had unwittingly transferred a bit of his own magic into me when he tried to kill me - the ability to speak to … er... certain animals... It's a talent that they consider dark, where I came from, and I've never found a good use for it, so I don't really use it. Tom didn't know that he'd done it, and wouldn't have if he'd known, so I guess that counts for theft, but there was also a sword that I'd needed to destroy … objects that Tom had cursed. I stole it from a bank vault, and hope to return it when I'm done, but …. well that counts for theft, too." 

Feeling sheepishly guilty with his admission, Harry shrugged turning and staring down at his hands. He still felt bad about keeping the sword of Gryffindor when he'd promised Griphook he'd return it, but until he found the other horcruxes, or another basilisk fang, he still needed it. When he looked up, though, Dean's pale lips were twisted in a smirk. 

"Okay, gotcha: birth, sacrifice, learning, theft." Dean summarized, "That's four." 

Harry nodded numbly, surprised by the quick acceptance of his words; they hadn't even challenged his statement that he could speak to animals. 

"That leaves loan, gift, and death!" Dean's brother growled, any trace of acceptance he might have deeply, deeply buried. 

"Okay," Harry agreed, ignoring the dark haired brother's glare and speaking directly to Dean. "Loan... when the war started to get really bad, one of the boy's that I went to school with loaned me a wand that he'd won from the wizard I mentioned earlier, the one who saw to it that I went to a magical school. The last time we spoke, I tried to give it back, but he said to keep it until we get this over with. As far as I know, he's still alive... so..." Harry shrugged not certain what else he wanted to say about it, and uncurled another finger, labeling it 'loan' with a murmur. 

After a moment, he continued, "The wizard he'd gotten the wand from - the one who'd had me brought to school?" he asked softly waiting for their nods to make sure they knew he was referring to the headmaster when he continued. Harry had such mixed feelings about Dumbledore that the less said about the wizard, the better, as far as he was concerned. 

"Yeah, what about him?" Dean prompted. 

"He gave me the cloak you pulled off me earlier the year I first came to school and later, left me another magical object in his will that goes with the cloak and wand." Harry's voice cracked as he said 'left me' the words having so many depths of meaning for him that he nearly choked on them, and he looked away embarrassed at the moment of weakness. 

"Okay." Dean confirmed, softly, drawing Harry's attention back as he spoke, "That's six." 

"Yeah," Harry murmured, his throat painfully tight. If he had mixed feelings about Dumbledore, it was nothing compared to the mix of feelings that he felt about Snape. "The last... transcendent of death... the wizard who begged Tommy to spare my mom's life, even before that, he'd become a spy for our side, and - I didn't know it at the time - but my ... my body guard of sorts. I should have realized it. The evidence was all there, but I was too stupid to see it. He put on a good show of hating me, so that he could stay in Tommy's good graces, but he was always there to protect me when he could be - at the risk of his own life more than once. I didn't see it or understand what I did know. Not until after..." 

"After?" Dean asked, certain he knew where it was going, but just as certain that they couldn't stop until it was finished. 

"He died." Harry choked out, his voice a dry rasp. "He was … Even though Tommy believed that Snape was loyal to him - he just killed him. Mione and I were hiding in this tunnel where they had slipped in to talk, just before the final battle, and we saw it happen, but we couldn't do anything about it, without risking everything. After Tommy left Snape to die, I went over to him to check him, and he … he used … used a spell called legillimency to show me everything that he'd been doing to protect me and what I needed to do from there... and then he died. Mione sa-id that it was because we were … er... still linked together by the spell when he died that some of his … er... talents were passed to me. Usually, when a wizard casts a spell, unless it's anchored to a magical object or lodestone, it stops when he di-es, but his spell didn't it gave me his memories like it was supposed to do, but it also... it gave me some of his abilities. I don't know if he wanted me to have them, but I kind of hope he did. He did a lot more to protect me than I'd ever realized, I'd like to think that he gave them to me to help me protect myself, so I like to think of it as a gift, too, but either way, it lasted beyond his death... so transcendent of death." 

Harry stared down at his seven unfurled fingers, feeling foolish for his rambling, and more than a little guilty for not telling them the other way that his magic had transcended death. He had originally planned to tell them how to stop Voldemort, but as he'd begun his story, he'd come to the realization that as muggle hunters, not even from Great Britain, and with no knowledge of the British wizarding world, much less their own, there was so very little they could do, and so many dangerous secrets that he had to keep to himself. 

It was all so exhausting; sickening to him every time he let himself think about it, and there was so little else he could think about. Almost as if that thought had taken the last of his energy, he felt himself slumping back weakly, pain radiating through his limbs. 

"Okay," Dean commented quietly, as he moved closer to sit by Harry, "I can see you're pretty wiped out, so I'm not going to push, but I do need to ask. You made it sound like you're being chased. Do you think they'll know you're with us? How much danger are we in here?" 

Harry didn't have to pause long to think about it. If Tommy's hunters had an idea where he was, they wouldn't have watched or waited. They would have attacked outright - the way they did in New York. Muggles didn't matter to them; they would have reveled in the carnage. 

"No, those vials I've been taking, one of them is a magical suppressant. They can't track me without my magical signature." 

"Then how did they find Jess?" Dean’s brother accused and his words hit home like Bellatrix Lestrange’s poisoned knife should have. 

He was right, of course. His tracker's wouldn't have found Hermione if it hadn't been for him. He'd known it was a risk,that they could find her if he got too close, but he'd taken the chance anyway worrying that he'd never get to see her again or tell her how much she meant to him. 

"I can't take the suppressant before the full moon; it messes with the other vial, and I'd thought I'd lost them after …. last time." Harry explained weakly, his chest tightening with anguish, almost to the point it felt like he breath, his grief so overwhelming. 

"Dude," Dean interrupted, cutting his brother off when it looked like he was going to make another angry comment. "Just a minute. What do you mean it messes with the other vial? What happens? Does it … is it explosive or something?" 

"No," Harry turned and looked at him in surprise, "Nothing like that. It just doesn't work as well; it needs magic to work, and without it, well some of the ingredients are pretty poisonous to me." 

"Yeah, I've noticed." Dean studied him with an intense gaze.


	13. Silver Slivers of Moonlight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

>   
> _Pain has a way of clipping our wings and_  
>  keeping us from being able to fly ... if left unresolved for very long, we can almost forget that we were ever  
> created to fly in the first place. 
> 
>  
> 
> WM. PAULYOUNG

"What?" It took several seconds for Dean’s comment to sink in, but when it did, Harry’s heart started beating erratically in his chest as his panic grew.

"Yeah, I wanted to say something yesterday, but... seems like other things came up. You're not looking too good; I mean, you're not choking or keeling over too much, but if you just don't take another dose for a day or too..."

"Dean!" Sammy barked a sharp warning at him, but Dean just continued, "Anyway, we're not exactly novices at protecting ourselves, so even if someone does come, we've got a good chance of coming out okay... and tonight's the full moon, so you'll be able to take again them tomorrow or the next day, right?"

"Noooooooooooo!" The cry ripped itself from Harry's throat.

He'd forgotten. He'd forgotten. For the first time in over a year, he'd forgotten.

"I... where are we? How far did we come from... no... it still won't be far enough. California. It's California. I thought I'd be … be … away before … that I wouldn't … I lost track... Damn it."

His breath was coming in panicked gasps that he couldn't have calmed it if he'd tried. If he'd still had his magic, he could have apparated out into the desert before the change, but they were too far from anywhere that was far enough away that his wolf could be let run without fear of harming or infecting anyone.

"Damn it. NO!" He cried again throwing his head back against his pillow, furious with himself, as furious and heartbroken as he was sure Bill had been when he'd realized… and Bill... No.

No. He couldn't think of Bill now.

There had to be a way. He couldn't risk them… but... Maybe it wasn't … maybe he could control it. He'd taken his wolfsbane the entire month to compensate for the magic suppressor, but … it would still put Dean and his brother in danger.

As much as he hated it, he only had one option left... an option that he couldn't help but hate for multiple reasons - chief among them being that he had Umbridge to thank for it. He hated it as much for what it symbolized as for what it did.

"Calm down, Man." Dean's words finally cut through his, drawing his attention to the fact that the man was holding him down on the bed, gently but firmly, his palms pressing Harry's shoulders back. "What's going on"

"Dean, let him go! Get away from him." Dean's brother ordered from somewhere off to the side.

"Put that thing away, Dude. He's freaking out enough as it is. That won't help."

"Deeeannnn." The other protested.

"Sammy, shut up, put that thing away, and sit the eff down. I don't know what's going on, but..."

"That's just it! You DON'T KNOW what's happening so..."

Before either of them seemed to be aware that he had calmed enough to think straight, Harry glanced out the window, but could only see that it was dark, not how dark nor how long it would be before the moon rose.

"Please," he gasped. "My bag, in my bag, there's a silver chain. Please can you get it?"

"Yeah, sure, we can. Why?"

"In a minute, I'll explain in a minute. I swear. Just … I need the chain," Harry trailed off trying to figure out how to convince them to get his rune crystals, also. The chain would be enough to hold him, but not keep him quiet. It would be safer, he used the crystals as a ward, or if they could... if he was right and they were hunters, they were squibs too and could use the rune crystals in the same way he could with his magics suppressed. Would that make enough of a difference?

They clearly didn't trust him, especially not Dean's brother, but... if they were in control maybe they'd be willing to take a chance. He wasn't certain about it, though. Maybe once they saw...

"Here," Dean offered holding the chain out to him and frowning when he scooted further back. "Wait a minute? Is this thing dangerous?"

He looked ready to drop it, having no idea what would happen if he did. Hoping to forestall Dean long enough to get the rest out, Harry shook his head frantically, groaning when the aching pain flared with his movements.

"No, not to you, or your brother. It only activates in proximity to... me. Please I know you don't trust me, that you don't have any reason to, but I swear on my life and my magic that I am telling you the truth. I need you to use the rune crystals. After you put the chain on my neck, you need to spread the runes around me in three concentric circles. Use all twenty four of them, Eight each circle. First Circle, the most suppressing, head then foot, right then left. Second circle, the lesser protective ones: Northeast, Southeast, Southwest, Northwest. The last circle, the most protective on North, South, East, West, with eiwaz closest to you. When the circle's done say 'silencio'... Please." Harry begged as he saw the brother start to protest, "I don't want to hurt you; I don't want to hurt anyone. Please. Please."

There was suspicion still in the brother's eyes, but something in Harry's voice or pleas must have reached them because after a moment, he nodded. Dropping back into the pillows, Harry nodded to Dean, cringing from him even as he stepped closer.

"What the... are you sure about this?" Dean challenged, concern and suspicion radiating in equal measures.

"Please," Harry begged again, only dimly aware of the tears streaming down his cheeks. "Please."

Dean leaned forward, reluctantly complying, but before could lay the chain around Harry's neck, it jumped out of his hands.


	14. In the Cruel Moonlight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ブレンキン  
> It is a curious sensation: the sort of pain that goes  
> mercifully beyond our powers of feeling.  
> When your heart is broken,  
> your boats are burned:  
> nothing matters any more.  
> It is the end of happiness and the beginning of peace.  
> George Bernard Shaw  
> ブレンキン

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _italics = Sammy's thoughts_

"Dean, let him go! Get away from him." Sam shouted as Black’s words began to fall into place. 

He was almost certain he was right, but if the wizard saw that he knew, there was no telling what he would do. Keeping Dean between him and the wizard, Sam edged back to their packs and slipped Dean’s colt out of it’s holster. 

“Dean, move out of the way.” Sam ordered just loud enough for Dean to hear, as he lifted the gun and sighted down the short barrel.

Dean’s ignored him for a moment, but finally turned and stared at his hands with a shocked expression, before shaking his head and meeting Sam’s eyes with a stern gaze. The kind of gaze that Sam was all too familiar with seeing on his father’s face, instead of his brother's, and the distinction hurt. Dean didn’t understand though. He hadn’t put the pieces together, and for some reason seemed to trust Jess’s brother. Well trusting Jess’s brother had gotten Jess killed, and Sam wasn’t going to let that happen again. 

"Put that thing away, Dude.” Dean ordered, “He's freaking out enough as it is. That won't help."

"Deeeannnn." He protested.

"Sammy, shut up, put that thing away, and sit the eff down. I don't know what's going on, but..."

"That's just it!” Sam yelled with exasperation, “You DON'T KNOW what's happening..." realizing that Black was distracted, Sam risked a stage whisper, “He’s not what he seems.”

"Please," Black interrupted them with a gasp. "My bag, in my bag, there's a silver chain. Please can you get it?"

_Silver..._ He knew it... _but that didn’t make any sense. What....Why?_

Sam watched his brother’s eyes darken with suspicion and confusion, the words seeming to trigger some realization. 

"Yeah, sure, we can.” Dean agreed too easily, “ Why?"

"In a minute, I'll explain in a minute. I swear. Just … I need the chain," Black pleaded weakly, and Sam fought a niggling sense of apprehension. If he was right, there was no way that Black would want to touch silver - any silver. 

As Dean rifled through Black’s saddlebags, Sam lowered the colt, standing slightly to the side to hide it’s presence. If he was wrong, it wouldn’t do to antagonize the wizard. 

"Here," Dean found the chain quickly and held it out to Black, confirming Sam’s suspicions when Black scooted away. 

The gesture was finally enough to show that something was off, and Sam breathed a sigh of relief when Dean asked Black. "Wait a minute? Is this thing dangerous?"

Black shook his head jerkily, groaning pathetically at the movement, but Sam had seen predators shamming before and knew better than to drop his guard. 

"No, not to you, or your brother. It only activates in proximity to...”

“Werewolves,” Sam supplied silently, wondering if Black would tell the truth. 

“me.” 

‘Well, Sam thought to himself, ‘that’s at least half the truth, anyway.’

“...swear on my life and my magic that I am telling you the truth. I need you to use the rune crystals.”

_What? No!_

Sam started to protest, but Black interrupted him before he could. 

“After you put the chain on my neck, you need to spread the runes around me in three concentric circles.”

_Concentric Circles? That... a religious symbol... How can he use a religious symbol, if he’s sold his soul?_

Sam shook his head, his mind numb with conflicting questions. 

_24? in 3 circles, concentric circles, but that’s symbolic for an archangel. The trinity. Divine protection._

“Eight each circle. First Circle, the most suppressing, head then foot, right then left. Second circle, the lesser protective ones: Northeast, Southeast, Southwest, Northwest. The last circle, the most protective on North, South, East, West, with eiwaz closest to you.”

Eiwaz? 

Having heard the name before, Sam scoured his memory for the rune, and caught a pained breath when a memory from early in his relationship with Jess, when he’d caught her drawing a little lightening shaped symbol on his caving gear before they went spelunking - flashed through his thought.

ブレンキン

__  
“This is Eiwaz, it’s symbol. It’s for the guardian tree, Yggdrasil, a holy  
ash tree that is supposed to shelter the nine … Well... Err... never mind.  
It’s just for... protection and good luck.”  
Jess murmured sheepishly, blushing as she continued to  
draw little lightning symbols on his harness clips,

_“Ooookay,” Sam agreed with amusement._

_“Laugh if you want.” Jess half pouted, “but it will make me feel better.”_

_“Whatever’ll make you feel better then,” Sam laughed, before pulling her_  
up into a hug and kissing her soundly.  


ブレンキン

Shaking himself out of his memory, Sam stared down at Jess’s brother in confusion. None of what Black was doing made sense, but the reminder of Jess and the the protective symbol had him weakening in his resolve ...

“When the circle's done say 'silencio'... Please." Black begged, meeting his eyes when Sam was about to protest, another remembrance of Jess and his basic knowledge of Latin telling him what the word meant.

"Please...I don't want to hurt you; I don't want to hurt anyone. Please. Please." Something in the man's desperate plea reached Sam, and despite himself, he nodded in agreement.

Dropping back into the pillows, Black nodded to Dean, even as cringed when Dean stepped closer.

"What the... are you sure about this?" Dean challenged, concern and suspicion radiating in equal measures.

"Please," Black begged again. Tears were streaming down his cheeks, and Sam found he couldn’t help echoing his request. "Please, Dean, Do what he says."

Dean leaned forward, reluctantly complying, but before could lay the chain around Harry's neck, it jumped out of his hands... and spun towards Black as if Dean had thrown a lasso... a seemingly possessed lasso that stretched impossibly long as it spun - links breaking and growing out from the chain - their tips sharpening like barbed wire (the kind favored by old Texas cattlemen before they had to worry about animal cruelty charges and insurance claims). Wrapping around Black’s throat in a coil it shouldn’t have been able to make, the ends of the chain slithered over his body, in tightening coils that bound his arms to his sides, encased his legs in evil looking spirals - barbs biting into his skin as he seemed to fight to stay still, and gagged him with silver strands that forced his mouth painfully far open before binding back on itself behind his head. 

And still, Black held their gazes with tortured, pleading eyes that veritably begged them not to interfere. 

Sam could only stare at Black in aghast horror, watching the chain jerk and writhe around the man’s body, mercilessly torturing him, even though he clearly wasn’t trying to resist - the visibly sharp barbs glistening with blood as they seemed to almost willfully tear at the skin and tighten piercing it. Through it all Black barely even moaned, not even as his the chain reaching the end of his ankles writhed like a jungle vine, intertwining with the the end creeping from the binding smeared in his blood at the back of his skull and contorting Black's body into a vicious backward bow.

Dean came to his senses first, growling as he jerked the bag of rune stones from Sam's hand and bending to lay the first of three concentric circles as Harry had instructed. 

As the first fingers of moonlight stretched through the window, seeming to crawl across the floor toward the man who'd willingly initiated his own torture, Dean shoved the emptied rune bag back into Sam's hands, ordering, "Say It" in a harsh near-barked command. 

"Silencio." The whisper barely falling from Sam's lips seemed to ignite a wave of luminescence from each of the crystals that combined and rose in a shear dome that closed over Black just in time to silence the first syllable of the scream that broke from the man as the moonlight reached his body, and he convulsed - forcing the chains barbs deeper into his skin and muscle as he began to transform.


	15. In the Light of the Moon

Years of hunting, carousing bars, and frequenting the cheapest of greasy spoons should have given Dean an iron-cast stomach, but apparently trudging through blood and gore spattered lairs, drinking happy hour specials that more often than not seemed to be made to from five parts paint thinner one part yellow food color, and eating dishes that sometimes even had fry cooks looking queasy -- hadn't been quite enough to kill the nausea that had taken up semi-permanent residence in the pit of Dean's stomach as he watched Black's transformation. 

Dean had never counted himself among the tree-hugging, new-age, greenies, but there was long way between touchy-feely, chick-flick cry-fests and being all copacetic with someone being tortured. 

Even if Black had been a warlock who'd sold his soul, Dean wouldn't have approved of the kind of torture they'd watched the magical chain inflict.

It wasn't the first time he'd seen a werewolf change, far from it, but Black's change had been entirely different.

The ugly silver barb wire chain, embedded into Black's skin and muscles, was rending long ugly gashes into Black´s cheeks, ribs, and legs. Despite Black's limbs lengthening by nearly a foot with the transformation, the chain hadn't stretched a single inch since wrapping around Black and dug the barbed wire impossibly deeper, tearing long bloody rents across Black's chest and stomach.

The rents bleed thickly, as they were pulled taut by the cutting chain, painting ugly brown red smears into the already well-stained motel carpet. As the chain was pulled tighter and tighter, the edges of the deep gashes curled away from the sharp metal barbs as if repelled by the silver slicing through Black's skin. 

As the chain refused to stretch or warp, Black was forced to contort into a torturous backward arch by the surprisingly slow expansion of his chest as the man's frame nearly doubled in length and gained half again its size in a scrawny sort of bulk that looked - to Dean - just as unhealthy as the man himself had appeared just before he'd collapsed. 

The hardest part to watch hadn't even been the truly gory parts like watching Black´s face stretch and contort into a muzzle: his skin forced to pull taught to the point of ripping, then tear, and regrow around the wire, embedding it in a way that was guaranteed to cause more torture when the reverse transformation was certain to rip the chain back out... or the sight of the werewolf's hind legs being drug out of their sockets as the strands of wire, which had earlier forced the human's body into a painful looking bow, hadn't given an inch - well, that hadn't been a particularly pretty picture either.

But that hadn't been the worst of it.

No, what had somehow been the worst was the gruesome and unnatural slowness of it all. Dean had seen werewolves turn only a handful of times, but those few times has been enough for Dean to know that it didn't take wolves more than two hours to turn. From what he'd seen it could take five minutes, maybe ten at the outside. But more than twelve to thirteen times that? Over two full hours?

No.

There was no question in his mind that whatever magic was animating the chain had also interfered with the length of time it took for Black to turn, and the only reason he could think of for it was to drag the torture out.

Finally... finally, Black's body stilled it's convulsions... though only after the moon had completely risen and no longer cast tendrils of weak light through the windows into the darkened room. Despite the rune crystal's luminescence, the room had stayed mostly dark as evening fell, and the brothers had both been too caught up in the watching Black's self-inflicted torture to remember turning on a light. 

Trained by years of hunting, Dean stared at the unmoving wolf until he was absolutely certain that nothing more was going to happen, silently counting to one hundred and eighty under his breath. He'd never seen a creature that had the self-control to hold off attacking more than three minutes. It didn't mean that one couldn't, but he felt marginally safer as he moved toward the lamp on the bedside table, to light the room, only to freeze in surprise as Black's eyes snapped open and he heard Sam gasp in surprise beside him. 

The eyes set into the werewolf's sickly-dull, black fur were brilliant green, filled with pain, despair ... and sanity; despite form the eyes were set into, the gaze staring back at them was utterly human.


	16. Cautionary Kindness

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
>  “The worst type of crying wasn't the kind everyone could see--the wailing on street corners, the tearing at clothes. No, the worst kind happened when your soul wept and no matter what you did, there was no way to comfort it. A section withered and became a scar on the part of your soul that survived. For people like me and Echo, our souls contained more scar tissue than life.”   
> ― _Katie McGarry, Pushing the Limits_  
> 

As dawn came, Sam felt his anger and resentment towards Black melting away to rationality. 

Having to watch anyone, even a creature that could readily rend him limb from limb, suffer eight hours of unremitting torture that the man inside the creature had willingly chosen to accept in an obvious bid to protect Sam, his brother, and anyone else in the area ... was more than enough to convince him that Black would not have willingly put Jess at risk - even if he had led unintentionally led her killer to her. It wasn't enough for him to forgive the man entirely, but it was enough to persuade him of Black's intentions toward him and Dean. 

Pulling the curtains wider and winding the wand on the blinds until the slats were spread in their widest open position, to let the morning sunlight reach Black as soon as possible. 

Before long, the room was lit pale grey, the morning light seeming to reach every corner and strong enough to make the silver barbs glint dangerously. 

Sam and Dean waited in tense silence for the moment the sun's rays would be strong enough to trigger the transformation that would return him to his human shell. 

When the motel's other residents began to stir, some going out to the attached diner, some going to the front office to pay, the tension that had been stretching Sam's nerves thin forced him to his feet. 

"Need to get some air; I'll go pay the owner for the rest of the week." The words seemed to burst out before Sam stopped pacing and running his hands through his hair. 

"You do that." His brother's unexpected agreement caught him by surprise, and it must have shown on his face because Dean snorted and looked away from Black to ask: "What? did you think I'd tell you not to? I was getting ready to do it myself. It won't be long before he sends the maids around to roust late risers out and clean up the rooms after check outs. Even if we grabbed Black and got outta here, we can't strip the carpet, and the scene it'd leave would be enough for them to call the police. Any way, the cops asked us to hang around here for a couple of days, I don't expect to see them, but better for us if they do check, were still here. No need to get a bolo issued for us, right?"

Sam shook his head at the reminder of their father's way of thinking. His time at Stanford had dulled his instincts and given him a sense of detachment from the pragmatically paranoid live style that his father had raised him to adopt. 

"Okay, you'll be alright, here, alone with him?" 

Dean's raised eyebrow and snarky expression were the only answer his brother gave, but were enough to communicate how ridiculous Dean found the question.

ブレンキン

"Well... I'm guessing you knew you wouldn't be turning back when you put that chain on, didn't you?" 

The glimmer in the werewolf's gaze sharpened, sparking with surprise. 

"I think that's a yes." Dean commented, half-guessing, half-willing himself to believe that Black was somehow conscious and present despite Black's change in form and Dean's ample experience with others of the kind. 

"So, instead of taking our heads off, you pick the option that nearly cuts yours off. Not that I don't appreciate the choice, but a little more forewarning, and we could have gotten you somewhere it wouldn't have been a problem - or at least a something a bit less brutal to tie you down."

Although Dean couldn't hear the sound of Black's response, the sudden outward puff of the wolf's jowls and the afterward ripple of Black's nostrils told Dean that Black had snorted in response.

"Hey, I get it. Better safe than sorry. I'd probably have done the same, which - if you knew me better- would tell you how bad of an idea that makes it. Anyway, it seems to me it would have been worth the chance." 

Black raised a brow that on a human face would probably implied, at the very least, a mildly scathing retort, but on the wolf looked more ironic. 

"Hey, just saying." Dean lifted his hands, with a shrug as he got up off the bed and walked toward the circle of stones. 

As Dean moved nearer, Black did something he hadn't through the previous twelve hours, despite the excruciating pain he must have suffered. Black rolled away, pushing the barbed chain deeper as he tried to wriggle back. 

"Woah there. Take it easy. If you don't stop moving, you'll end up cutting your throat." Dean warned trying to keep his voice as low and coaxing as possible. "Let me take a look. Don't know if there's anything I can do to get you out, but if I can get a closer look, who knows. Just stay still. Okay." 

Crouching over Black, Dean studied the werewolf cautiously tracing his hand above the chain high enough to avoid being cut by the barbs but low enough to track the coils of the wire. 

_Damn!_

The wire might have been thin enough to cut with a simple wire cutter, but the wire's tension; the depth of its barbs; and the multiple coils around Black's throat, mid-drift, and major muscle connections almost guaranteed that at least one major vessel and more than one muscle group would be cut by a barb on the sudden release of the chain's tension. It would be nearly impossible to lock the chain in place while releasing it safely, segment by segment, until Black could be freed. 

"Doesn't look good." Dean grumbled, reading Black's agreement and foreknowledge of the fact in Black's gaze, he nodded. "Okay, so you already knew that. Let me guess, this thing's gonna be like your rune stones and need a password? One you conveniently forgot to tell us?" 

Watching a werewolf roll it's eyes was practically surreal for Dean and stirred up a chuckle that he quickly suppressed, doubting that Black would find much of anything funny in the situation. 

"I'll take that as a yeah, and I'm just betting that its Latin like the password for the stones. Tell me you know what it is."

It wasn't a fair question, and Dean regretted it almost as soon as he asked, but before he could retract the question, Black responded lifting his muzzle and dropping it, in a clear nod, despite the pain the movement must have caused. 

"Listen, Black, until we get you out of that forget trying to answer unless we're about to do something completely kick ass stupid." 

Black's jowl and nostrils rippled with another snort, but otherwise, Black didn't move any further. Well, it would probably be more accurate to say that Black practically froze when Dean's hand dropped lightly on the top of his head. Not stopping to think about why he was doing it or how Black might feel about it, Dean went with his instincts and offered the only comfort that seemed available. Careful not to jostle the runes, even though he wasn't as worried as either Black or Sam had been that Black was a danger, Dean dropped his hip to the ground, just outside the outer ring, as he reached over and ran his fingers through the brittle fur between the wolf's brow ridge and ears.

At first, Black stayed almost rigidly stiff, seeming afraid to make even the slightest movement, but as Dean continued Black's tense muscles became more malleable, softening millimeter by millimeter. It wasn't much, and Dean knew that it couldn't really be doing much for the pain, but he still counted it as accomplishment, if small when Black's eyes drifted shut and his breathing began to slow.

ブレンキン

"What the hell?" Sam demanded, cursing Dean's recklessness under his breath, as he stared into the motel room... grimacing as his brother gestured at him to shut up. 

"Yes, please, do be quiet." A soft-spoken, oddly accented comment from behind startled Sam and caused him to turn on his heel before taking a step back into the room and grabbing the door's edge... speechless as he stared at the visitor.

Staring past Sam, into the motel room, eyes fixed on Black, the man who'd spoken almost looked like a patchwork quilt of features from a handful of backgrounds. The man's hair, except for a thick streak of white at one temple, was sheer ebony black and braided loosely behind him. His bone structure and three-quarters of the skin covering his face had an asian cast and structure, but the rest of his face from his left temple to just inside his brow line and down his the peak of his left cheek was covered by a graft of dark skin. His outer wear was a sleek, high-end black leather overcoat - completely mismatched with the worn plaid flannel shirt, well-worn jeans, and handmade moccasins. Just peeking out of the cuff of his overcoat a Breitling chronograph rested side by side with a string of turquoise chunks.

Finally, shaking off his surprise, Sam stepped into the center of the doorway, trying to block the stranger's view of his brother and Black, demanding, "Can I help you?"

"Yes, if you'll step out of the way and permit me to assist Mr. Black."


	17. Enter Black Jack

Kuro stared down at the scene presented by Mr. Black and a man he believed to be the older, and smarter, sibling of the dark-haired man blocking the door.

The older sibling's clear recognition that Mr. Black, regardless of his current form, was not a threat and the man's apparent acceptance of the transformation would be immanently helpful - particularly given Mr. Black's own fear of his condition... that is once Kuro got passed the man's obvious flare of protective instincts- radiating from the man's sudden defensive posture and calculating eyes. 

Although Kuro could not see it, he was immediately certain that the man had a weapon either on him or within close enough reach that he would have it before Kuro reached a single step further. 

"Greetings, I am Dr. Kurō Hazama, Mr. Black's physician." Kuro introduced himself, hoping the explanation would allow them to dispense with the formalities and wasted time ... and move on to 'treating' Mr. Black.

Despite the introduction, however, the older sibling had not noticeably relaxed, so Kuro continued, "The English translation, if you prefer, is Black Jack" in hopes of reducing the man's tension with the humor that several Americans of his acquaintance from the association of his name to a common card game... and dispensing with an unnecessary waste of time.

His bid was marginally successful as the elder brother relaxed immediately, but not for the reason he thought, which became immediately obvious as the man glanced up and down Kuro's frame - not commenting on his skin grafts from an obviously different race nor the shock of white hair that stood out from his otherwise blue-black hair... as Kuro was used to from most new acquaintances - but fixing on the turquoise bracelet gifted him by a Shoshone chief in Wyoming and asking, "Shaman Jack?" 

"Yes," Kuro ruefully admitted.

The title had been given to him by one of the first shamans he had met on coming to the United States in search for a treatment for Mr. Black's lycanthropy (after the shaman met Pinoko), and while it had been quite useful in gaining information from the numerous other shaman's he had interviewed in his search for a treatment, Kuro did not feel the title was any more authentic than the medical certifications he might have gotten in Japan, had he been interested.

In giving Pinoko a life, he may have done something that the shamans viewed as qualifying to their ranks, but Kuro had only marginally studied healing practices and despite being able to put some of these methods into practice did not hold their beliefs, so loathed the thought that the title would give any impression otherwise -- even knowing that Mr. Black preferred to use it instead of Kuro's true name to protect Kuro in the event that any of his communications were intercepted. 

Patting Mr. Black's shoulder in a seemingly-comforting manner, the older brother stood and introduced himself. "Dean Winchester and this is my brother, Sammy. What can I do to help?"

/Well, that was unexpectedly easy./ Kuro thought to himself with amusement, just as the younger sibling decided to speak up: "Dean, what are you doing? You can't mean to let him just come in. He introduced himself, so I know you don't know him... Do you?"

"Pretty much what it looks like Sammy." 

"Dean!" The younger man protested, somewhat petulantly, in Kuro's opinion. 

"Sammy, I've got a nose for trouble, and he's not it, so do me a favor and get out of the way and let the man in. Oh, and shut the door. This probably isn't something, we want any one to see. " The older brother ordered.

Kuro was tempted to disagree; he was entirely capable of being 'trouble' if he'd wished to be, but at the moment, it did nothing to further Mr. Black's welfare, so he held his tongue... agreeing instead, "Your marginally accurate olfactory glands not withstanding, my sole intent in coming here is to assist a former..."

Kuro paused scanning the prostate werewolf with a calculating eye as he continued, "turned-current patient. Mr. Black, it is good to see you again" before chastising, " though somewhat disappointing that you were not sufficiently invested in your own welfare to allow a month to lapse before needing my services again. Gentlemen, if I may..."

Politely pushing by the younger man, Kuro joined the man who'd introduced himself as Dean, before kneeling, at Black's side as he ordered the other brother, "Do close the door. Maintaining patient privacy is critical to ensuring the reduced stress levels needed for full recovery."

In his periphery, Kuro noticed that Dean appeared to be amused by his brother's befuddlement, but as the brother complied and closed the door, he refrained from commenting and turned his attention back to Mr. Black. 

"Tell me, Mr. Black, is this device as devious as the Ms. Umbridge's other invention?"

Black noticeably blinked twice, and Kuro frowned, again wondering at Black's stupidity at keeping such devices on himself - given that they were the creations of a known (and sadistic) enemy. Even in the name of protecting others, the tendency amounted to nothing less than abject masochism. 

"The usual fee, then?" Kuro asked, noticing Dean's grimace as Black intentionally shifted again to nod.

"You disapprove?" Kuro questioned, amused when the man shook his head before nodding. 

"Hey, it's not my place to criticize."

"But..." Kuro prompted. 

"But..." Dean continued, eyeing Black sympathetically, "It just doesn't seem kosher - negotiating fees with someone caught a torture trap whether he put himself there or not, but if you two have some sort of agreement, it's not my place to say anything."

"Precisely." Kuro agreed, ignoring most of the man's objection to say, "Now, if we may get down to the matter of Mr. Black's treatment. The best assistance you can provide is information. Did either of you or did he utter the locking phrase 'obfirmatis' ?" 

"I didn't. Sammy?" 

"What?!?" The younger brother questioned. 

/He clearly is not capable of providing pertinent answers/ Kuro sighed before repeating himself slowly as he stared derisively at the younger brother, "Mr. Winchester, did you or Mr. Black utter the phrase 'obfirmatis' or any phrase sounding similar?" 

'Sammy' shook his head in negation- clearly still discomfited by his brother's seemingly easy acceptance of Kuro, so Kuro elected to withhold the derisive thought at the inarticulate answer and push forward: "Very well, Gentlemen, gather up the cleanest, thickest materials you have available and as much of it as you can gather. Before, I attempt to release this noose, we will need create a buffer between the noose and his body."

"I'm Dean; he's Sam; and neither of us are 'gentlemen'," the elder of the two retorted, reluctantly giving up his spot beside Black with one last stroke.

"While that was somewhat informative, it does little to aid Mr. Black's circumstances, so may I suggest that you restrain any current and future urges to exchange niceties and simply follow instructions. I assure you I have absolutely no interest in your names, interests, or exploits except in respect to their immediate impact on my patient's current welfare."

"Well, aren't you a friendly one?" Dean mocked, but nevertheless moved to one of the beds and emptied a canvas bag out tossing a jean jacket, a pair of moderately clean jeans toward Kuro. Catching it easily, Kuro immediately started wrapping the leg of one pair around the loosest expanse of chain.

After he finished with the first pair of jeans and the jacket, Kuro looked up at the other brother, who had yet to move from his spot just inside the door, irritation rising quickly at the man's immobility. Despite his desire to keep matters at least marginally amicable for Mr. Black's benefit, Kuro found his tone and expression edging toward scathing as their eyes met.

"From your... brother's..." Kuro began, his tone implying a question that Dean answered with a nod before kuro continued, "From your brother's diction and manner, I had presumed him to be the more educated sibling, but considering how poorly he performs under simple instruction, the estimation clearly requires revision."

"Cut him some slack, will ya?" Dean answered in an defensive undertone, "He just buried the girl he was gonna marry."

"My condolences," Kuro responded somberly, before brushing off any acknowledgement there might have been for his unnecessary rudeness, "Still, one would think that he would wish to avoid burying another acquaintance however soon this may be after, but as he seems unable to act, it is only more incumbent on you to either direct him as needed or to fill in for his lapse. The speed of Mr. Blacks release from his bindings is completely dependent upon the speed at which we can encase the wire in material so that the embedded barbs will not shred his throat, muscles, or vital organs." 

At his response, the two brothers shared a glance that seemed to speak volumes between them sending the younger man out the door presumably to their car and the older back to the beds which he promptly stripped and returned from with sheets, blankets and pillow cases in hand. 

"I believe that I did specify the cleanest materials available." Kuro derided with an arched eyebrow, but subsided as Dean explained that he'd only had a 'go bag' and his brother's belongings had burned in the fire that ended his fiance's life, so this might be as good as they could get, unless his brother found something in the saddlebags of Black's motorcycle. 

"Very well, watch carefully." Kuro ordered before demonstrating how they would need to bind the barbwire.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're not familiar with Black Jack (illegal surgeon, legendary healer, and medical mercenary - with great knife-throwing skills, if not a sparkling attitude) from Manga fame, you can find out more about him here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Jack_(character)


	18. Sinter

Sinter stared numbly as the three men moved around it wrapping soft materials in thick circles over and over the biting rope's spines. A closed-off part of his mind knew that 'biting rope' wasn't the name of the thing wrapped around him, but Sinter eagerly ignored the closed-off part because he could feel it held other names and details that he definitely did not want to know.

In fact, the closed off part of his mind seemed in vehement agreement with his desire to stay disconnected from the rest of himself and submerged, which was curious enough in itself that Sinter mentally poked at it until - in seeming self-defense - it released a small overflow of the toxic despair, grief, and pain that it was bottling up inside, and Sinter quickly retreated having absolutely no desire to drown in the ugly emotional tide waiting behind the closed-off part's barrier.

"Shhh, easy, easy." coaxed the amber-haired, crouching man, who had sat most of the night at Sinter's side rubbing a hand down his haunch where the biting rope permitted. "It won't be much longer."

For Sinter, time passed almost without notice, the power of the biting rope holding him in his current form long past the unfamiliar presence of bright warm light cutting through the space surrounding him. 'Sunlight' the closed off part of his mind whispered before going silent again, for once, not fighting to force him back into their other form. He was content instead to watch the amber-haired man move around him wrapping the biting rope in soft wraps that alternately smelled of the amber-haired man and the taller man who watched him with a nervous gaze and smelled of light fear and mistrust.

The two-colored man who had taken the pain away the last time that he had found Sinter after the closed off part used another bitter smelling trap to prevent Sinter from hunting occasionally stopped to pat Sinter on the head or stroke a part when the biting rope caused pain but otherwise stayed silent, leaving the amber-haired man to sooth Sinter. It wasn't long though, before the biting rope jerked in various directions as the amber-haired man and two-colored man began cutting the biting rope - freeing him of its hold.

The taller man jumped back the smell of fear thick around him, and tried to pull the amber-haired man away. Sinter understood the man was afraid that Sinter would attack, but for the first time since they had begun to change, Sinter obeyed the closed off-part of his mind's order to stay still. Certainly, he was hungry, but he did not need the other's silent command to tell him that the men were not food. The two-colored man took pain away, the amber-haired man as well and there was something in his smell and manner that compelled Sinter's deferral, and the taller man ... the taller man was under the amber-haired man's protection - and thereby under Sinter's.

"Good Boy," The amber-haired man commented patting his side again, sitting beside him again as the two-colored man began to check him over and smear odd-smelling cream into the cuts left by the biting rope.

When he was finished, the two-colored man crouched down into looking and lifted Sinter's head to stare into his eyes, asking: "Mr. Black?"

The closed-off-part of his mind stirred momentarily but didn't try to override Sinter's control of the body as it had earlier.

"Mr. Black?" The two-colored man asked again. "Can you hear me?"

Again, the closed-off-part stirred, but worryingly didn't seem to have the energy to push Sinter aside. While Sinter had no interest in giving up the body until it had fed and often resented the constancy of the other's control, Sinter was not unaware that it would not have survived their pursuers without the other's ability to anticipate and avoid the traps laid for them.

Finally, with a sigh, the two-colored man asked, "Sinter?" and Sinter whined in response.

"Baka..." the two-colored man uttered before cutting himself off with a shake of his head.

"What's going on?" the amber-haired man demanded.

"Mr. Black has apparently permitted himself to submerge beneath the wolf's alternate personality. While - in some ways- this might have been helpful, if I cannot communicate what Mr. Black needs to do to complete the transformation, he will be stuck in this half-transformed state." The two-colored man complained, staring at Sinter in irritation.

"So, I was right." The amber-haired man continued, "this isn't just how British werewolves look? I thought might have just been a species thing, because some of the images do look like that."

"No, while there are varying species of werewolves, it appears the host's belief and exposure to werewolf manifestation guide the transformation. Weres who are raised close to their tribes or who saw the creature in natural wolf form will invariably transform into naturally appearing wolves. Where others whom have been exposed to the images and tales of wolves who appeared in this image will transform to match. Mr. Black has informed me of a similar transformation - an animagus transformation- that should allow him to adjust his form to the natural appearance you have noted. Additionally, the quioxte tribes transform without losing access and control by their human minds. Feasible, Mr. Black can do the same, if he were present to understand the implications and actions needed."

"Why isn't he changing back now?"

"I am afraid, Gentlemen, that is for him to explain. However, as I am undoubtedly more able to provide him the care he requires, and his current form is not conducive to being near the public, If you will help me gather his things, we will be on our way."

"I don't think so," the amber-haired man protested, launching into an argument with the two-colored man, but Sinter quickly lost track of the back and forth that followed as he drifted off to sleep.


End file.
